Prologue

Happy trails.

Word Count: 1890
Total: 1890
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PROLOGUE

At night he watched the stars.

He could see them by the thousands each night at the top of the building, sitting alone in the vast black nothingness, watching the spinning cosmos from his own tiny dot of a world. It made him feel small, as it should, but he knew more than anything he wanted to feel those stars. Not only see them, as he did now, perched with an empty Styrofoam cup in one hand as he gazed from the balcony, but to actually feel their light and heat. An infinity of suns yet to be explored, and yet here only pinpricks. He wondered if somewhere across the universe someone sat in his own balcony, watching and thinking.

By day there was the constant rush of human existence, always a sense of purpose and need and urgency, as if at any given moment the world balanced on the edge of a blade. There were places to, papers to sign, people to meet, and it seemed all at once the most strenuous and the most beautiful feeling in the world. Sometimes it was too much--he would be the first to admit that much--but at the end of the day when the world was quieted and darkened, when the people came home to warmth and comfort to sleep in silence, when the world felt, for a moment, safe…in the end, it was worth it. In the end, it was enough.

He smiled.

“Professor?”

The familiar voice sounded distant and vaguely unimportant to his mind, but nonetheless he turned. The light that poured blaringly from the open door behind him cut through the darkness like a clean knife, eliminating the stars from the sky almost instantly. A meek shadow managed to form in the beam, a dim gray figure framed by black and white. In his haze, he didn’t answer.

“Sir?”

“Yes?” He didn’t bother to correct the formality.

“Everyone’s gone for the night. Should I lock up or should I just leave it to you?”

“I lock up most nights,” he answered, a mild sigh forming in his voice as he stood. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be leaving soon myself.”

“Alright, sir,” came the unfaltering response. There was a short pause, and although he couldn’t see past the blinding white he knew the militaristic expectation that must have painted the man’s face in that moment, that pause to catch the salute that itched at his hand like a never-ending rash.

“Oh--Karl,” he said, stepping into the light, hands dangling loosely in the pockets of his jacket.

“You did well today. Very good work, even by my standards. I think we’re lucky to have you on the team.” He smiled with an uncommon sincerity that he could see reflected in the man’s glinting eyes.

“Thank you, sir. I’m glad to be working here. It’s such a privilege to be working under a man so--”

“Karl?”

“Yes?”

“Its Alex--Aleksei at the least. Skip the formalities. They don’t make much difference in a place like this.” His tone remained even, but his smile never lessened; he always enjoyed tearing down formalities in the men the military sent his way.

“Ah…yes…Alex,” Karl answered slowly, as if attempting to ingrain the name into his memory.

“Thank you, Alex.”

“Go home to your wife and get some sleep. Early to work tomorrow, yes?”

A smirk, forgetting himself in the ease of the moment. “Same to you, my friend. Schast'ya i zdorov'ya!” With a tired grin, Karl let the door swing slowly closed on silent hinges, flooding Alex within the calm darkness once more.

He simply stood, staring fixedly at the single sliver of light that fought through the bottom of the door, as if entrance by its very existence, even as a subconscious smile graced his lips at the familiar phrase.

Sir…everyone thinks they should call me “Sir” now, he thought curiously. As if I might snap at them for being informal. You’d think with all the hours of the day we spend together, they’d understand I’m no different from them…only luckier, I suppose. No, even that wasn’t quite right. Lucky wasn’t the right word for it. He wasn’t so sure he was lucky, but he knew he was happy. He knew he was at peace. This project alone had changed his entire life in so many ways already, in only six months. And it was still only just begun.

Less than a year ago he had been sitting in a tiny room with peeling dulled-pea-green walls, sitting on a dilapidated bed that seemed to be decaying from the inside out, writing off bills he couldn’t pay and college tuition fees that not only seemed impossibly huge now but also represented something that seemed nothing more than a bad idea. A good dream, perhaps, once, but a bad idea in the end. He could have saved the money, became the humble watchmaker/homemaker that his father had always planned for him to be. Instead, he took the money and a one-year scholarship that hardly was worth his efforts to study engineering. Top of his class--but not good enough to pay back, I guess. Enough pride and esteem to last a lifetime, it had seemed, but it hadn’t lasted even a few years out of school. Sitting alone, in a bedroom not big enough to let another fill it with him, not small enough to afford comfortably, Alex was in trouble.

The day the three military officials in stoic masks and tight suits with dully glimmering pins turned up on his crumbling little square of a doorstep, Alex had nearly laughed. “You must mean another Borisova--not an uncommon name, friends. I studied engineering ages ago--” not a total lie, at least it seemed not to be--“and didn’t do so great at it judging by what I got out of it in the end. Unless you’ve come to give me a check of a hefty sum, then good day.”

As if on cue, a secret smile snuck into the features of the young man that stood before him. One of the men behind him (younger, Alex could tell, yet broader, stronger perhaps; more years in service he guessed, judging by the stolidity he maintained and the steadfast blue eyes that peered not at him but rather at a spot just above Alex’s left shoulder) held in his hands a briefcase, which shifted slightly with his weight, as if itching to be opened. No matter how small the movement, Alex caught it from the corner of his vision and cocked his head. “I have a feeling you three wanted to show me something, then?”

“The government is interested in your work on dark matter.” The apparent leader spoke first, and Alex was surprised to notice the lack of familiar accent. “We’ve been doing some practice tests lately with it, and have been looking through every engineer we could find. A professor recommended your work and research--a Professor…” A pause. Certainly not Russian. Alex knew the look of a foreigner struggling with pronunciation. “Professor Abduluv, I believe. He spoke very highly of you. Said that if anyone knew anything about dark matter, it was his Aleksei.”

Alex’s eyes flickered slightly in interested, but he didn’t let his face show it outright. He coughed slightly, if only to break the silence (although the thickness in his throat forced him to remember his cold, especially in light of the cool air wafting up from the stairs outside). “Ah…I haven’t spoken to him in a long time,” he answered slowly, thinking back on the last time they had seen each other. “He was always saying how much better his students were over any other. Last time I talked to him, he told me that if ever I needed a job to come to him.” He smiled then at the thought. “It’s been years, but…I guess this is that job, da?”

The three gentlemen at his door merely watched him expectantly, the third standing just off to the side peering into the doorway with a look that Alex could only have described as purely thankful to the Heavens above and all its gods. It both intrigued and suddenly, strangely, scared him.

Another light cough burst from his chest as he swung the door open wider. “Well…then I suppose you’ll be wanting to come in, da? It’s a little cramped. I haven’t had the time to clean everything up lately. What with the crisis…hard to find a job, let alone get a decent semblance of a salary out of it. But…um…you can sit right over here if you’d like.” He let the three men inside, ignoring the look the briefcase-wielder sent at the dilapidated table by the wall that Alex had indicated. The men sent silent glances amongst themselves, as if asking if this was really the right man to be wasting their time with. Alex could see them without seeing--nearly every visitor he’d ever had in the shit-hole he half-heartedly and mockingly labeled as “home” had gazed with the same disapproval around his tiny room of an apartment. Skepticism abounded in their eyes, at least in four of them. Only one set, Alex could see as he approached the three soldiers, was not filled with disapproval. Finally, after stalling with his own questions, Alex sat on a slightly shorter stool beside Mr. Hopeful.

Reaching the short distance to his left to the makeshift shelf in the corner, Alex pulled forth a tall bottle of Vodka and four glasses, tilting his head to the side as he shook them. All three men turned down the offer, again to Alex’s surprise. Whatever this was all for, it must have been something big. “Suit yourselves,” he answered to their silence, pouring a small glass for himself. He raised it with a mild and half-hearted smile--“To business--” and downed it in one thick swallow. The three men glanced at each other again, and this time dread accompanied their skepticism.

“Look, Mr. Borisova--”

“Alex, please.”

A testy leer from the leader. “Look…the Professor told us you were the very best. Said you’d be ready and willing and raring to go. Now, if that’s not so and you’ve already made up your mind, we can leave you in peace and go on our way. Find someone else to ask.”

“By the looks on your faces, I have a feeling you’re running out of people to ask,” Alex said with a smirk, resting his chin in the palm of his right hand, elbow resting on the table. “I’m not refusing just yet. I haven’t even heard your offer. Now look…” The minor amusement in him was gone suddenly, but nearly returned when he saw the way the three men straightened subtly in their seats. His gaze wandered to each, from Mr. Hopeful on his right, to their leader, to the briefcase-wielder. “I know there must be someone out there, somewhere in the world, that has a far better reputation than I. I have been a construction worker for four years. I haven’t opened a book on anything in ages, let alone in engineering or physics. You want to know about dark matter, go back to Moscow and ask the Prof for his copy of the research, but I know you’re here for something more.”

A silence.

“We need you, Mr. Borisova...to build us a ship.”