Taku
Taku from "The Gardener" - Illustration; Keith O'Connor
The man crossed the room, stood before Argarrai and spoke with a soft engaging voice, conveying more than direct translation.
“My name is Taku.” he said.
He looked out the window to where the lights of a ship could be seen slowly ascending through the atmosphere from the nearby space port. Argarrai had spent most of his professional life there.
“When I was young, I was like you, I viewed things the same way and my life was not unlike yours. I felt curiosity burning inside whenever I looked into the night sky. Interstellar travel was well established when I was born. My people had escaped gravity to explore our local space. Eventually reaching beyond our physical limits to travel intergalactic distances, using different scales of time and life. Ship after ship went into the darkness in search of universal answers. We found other civilisations, new materials and technologies but the simple questions remained.”
He paused.
“I would battle with what I was, what my world was, what my people were and simply, why?”
He looked at his hands as if first noticing them, glanced briefly at Argarrai and returned his gaze
to the stars.
“It was a long time ago”
The words “long time” were emphasised. The stranger was intriguing but there was something
odd, something that made Argarrai uncomfortable, he was too familiar.
“Who are you?”
The words rasped. Argarrai’s chest rose and fell rapidly, the sweat on his brow glistened as
breathing became more difficult. His toes were outlined, involuntarily clenching and unclenching
against the sheets.
“I have little time for new friends or flippant conversation.”
His eyes glistened with amusement; even on his death bed a little sarcasm could be served. His mind was clear and curious. This was how he had always felt! A sense of deep frustration at his place in the universe. A successful professional life and overcoming personal tragedy to raise his daughter Sen, were universally trivial – it was all constrained within a painfully minimal context and had little to do with the surrounding world, the planet he grew up on, the solar system, the galactic arm, deep space and the expanding universe beyond. In short – what was the bloody point?
Taku smiled kindly, apparently sensing Argarrai’s thoughts. He leaned further forward,
chuckling.
“Yes, you are just like me”
“You know that it is your time to die and you desperately want answers. For that you must live
much, much longer. You must look into the night sky and see more than stars.”
–
Maybe Tomorrow: @mayb2morrow
Fergus Neff: @chillyspoon
Illustration of Taku for The Gardener by Keith O’Connor – Aug 2009.
