Fallen From Stars - SEONG HEE-YOUNG (Part 1)

(Chapter 1, part 1)

[ I haven’t time in the day or enough carpal in my tunnel to put out Fallen from Stars at anywhere the same speed The Pearl Crucible is coming out, but I am going to give it a whirl because I am insane and because the story is getting impatient. The plan is to post 1/3 of a chapter a week on Sunday afternoons until The Pearl Crucible is complete and then let fly at full speed; hopefully, I’ll get well ahead of that in back-material in case of sudden doubts and edits, but the time is past due.

Serialization is not for the faint of heart—or at least for the edit-prone. Talk about tight-rope walking with no net … and don’t get me started about Krisa … Heavens, if you had any idea what goes on around here, you would be astonished. My therapist refers to it as overperforming. Apparently, it’s a negative? Who knew. — Ed. ]

There are no dreams there, they said. She’d wondered if there would be, if the long years would be spent with memory and illusion.

They assured her no, it will be as if no time passed at all.

They moved across the deck, all of them, and they shook hands and bowed to each other and laughed, and the life support crew helped them lie down.

Sensors, sedatives. The fresh pillow’s stuffing creaking, clean new cotton that squeaked under her head. Her hair around her ears. She brushed a strand from her eyes. Clean, new fabric, a faint vinegar odor of fresh-fixed dyes. She folded her hands on her chest, on her waist, laid them by her side. Which would be most comfortable?

It won’t matter, they said. You’ll be uncomfortable when you wake up, no matter what. You’ll move anyway, just at first, just a little.

All right. I’ll lie like this.

We’re going to close the lid. Nervous?

A little, sunbae.

Don’t worry. You won’t be awake very long.

All right.

When it is closed, shut your eyes. Count backward from one hundred.

All right.

Goodbye!

Goodbye.

They shut the lid; she closed her eyes and began to count.

… it was like she was in deep water, and her eyes registered nothing. As if she was rising, slowly at first, then more quickly, in a cloud of bubbles, though perhaps that was imagination. Was there sound?

Yes, yes there was—several sounds.

First, she heard a loud clang, then a hiss. There was a wind, deep and cold, moving across her.

Then, she knew she was freezing.

Where am I?

There were flashing amber lights in the darkness, and she felt wrapped in snow. She couldn’t tell up from down. But . . .

I’m lying down. That’s it, I’m lying down in the snow.

She had to be in the park. That was it. The amber lights were from the Hangseong Tower. It had snowed again; all the paths were covered in deep layers of new fall. She relaxed on her back, feeling light as a feather. She wore a black coat and black mittens, and her black furry boots she’d gotten at the shops. She’d been walking through the old playground, and Chang-ho oppa had pushed her down in a deep bank of snow in a playful mood. That made sense. He would do that. Then he’d put his arm around her and pull her up out of the cold flakes and kiss her. And say—

—and say—

The hissing did not stop, nor did the wind.

Lights and sparkles filled her eyes as she tried to blink. It was initially random, like rubbing your eyes hard and pressing against them until the colors and the designs came. Or sun-dazzle on water in the harbor, on rare bright, clear days.

No, it’s dark.

Was she blind?

No, the lights were there. They moved and moved again in the same way. Up, down, skip, up, down, skip. Was that truly the Hanseong Tower? She reached up. No, she tried to reach. She couldn’t move. Her muscles hurt, were stiff. She felt like something entombed in cement for a century and then drawn out alive again, the cement crumbling around her.

Her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. “Chang-ho oppa … ” she croaked. Help me, she wanted to say. She couldn’t.

Her voice was thick and gravelly; her mouth was dry as paper. It wasn’t easy to breathe.

But.

A voice was speaking, and she tried to focus on it as she pushed through the soft folds of snow. No! The snow was slumping from around her, slipping off and away. Her nose started working, and everything smelled like medicine and the inside of a grandma’s linen press. Lavender, age, hair-powder. Musty wood. Camphor.

Ah, speak slower, she tried to say to the voice. What do you want? Why did Chang-ho shove me into the snow? Where is he? Why—

“One, two, three, four, five,” the steady voice said. “Attention, Seong Hee-young. One, two, three, four, five.”

That means something, she thought. There was a slow-flashing amber light, and she felt things shuddering around her. The tower dissolved and reassembled, turned into terminal screens, low room lights. But she forgot about the tower because— Where’s my hand? I can’t feel my hand—

The snow disappeared like smoke, withering around her. She felt no warmer.

“Attention—”

My hand? Oh, there it is.

It floated, and she looked at it curiously as it drifted over her chest, feeling nothing except dead, cold, and prickly. It could have been someone else’s hand.

“One, two, three, four, five—”

Who is counting? Why?

“Yah!” she croaked aloud. “Who are you?” Her mouth felt as dry as an old boot and tasted worse

The voice paused its count.

“Seong Hee-young, hello. Can you sit up?”

“I can’t move my hand.”

“You are moving your hand already. You just cannot feel it. Think about each finger.  Imagine where all are supposed to be. Imagine trying to pick up a stylus. Fingertip to fingertip.”

She flexed and tried to grasp—painful sensation returned by degrees like a wave of fire.

The lights cleared in her burning eyes as she blinked. She found she could use the side of her hand to wipe cold goo from her face. She blinked again. Her eyes didn’t lie now. It was not Hangseong Tower after all: Data monitors were mounted on the bulkhead, which became excited as she tried to move. “This is terrible,” she said plaintively.

“I hear you, Seong Hee-young. Can you sit up?”

It wasn’t snow after all. It was thick, cold, slippery, almost sticky, but eroding in the air and being sucked up into the air circulation returns. It stank of medicine, age, cold, metal, ozone. The dream state still tugged at her mind and offered reasonable connections. Ice cream. It wasn’t winter at all, but the brief warm summer in Eunhaeseong and the ice cream cart in the park was open, and she was leaning in looking at the flavors and falling and falling …

“I’m stuck.”

She flailed in the layers of ice cream. Nothing smelled, tasted, or sounded right. Clouds drifted away from her. Am I in the sky?

She sat up, unsteady, holding on to wakefulness again, willing the dreams away. Her mind wasn’t right. She began to feel it was dangerous to lay here like this. What if there was an emergency going on? The lights looked like an emergency.

I’m in a coffin.

It was a white steel and glass coffin; clouds were blowing from her, sucked from her in every direction, and amber lights were flashing.

“ … Hello?”

“Hello, Seong Hee-young.”

( … This way to Chapter One part 2 … )