Atmosphere: We Don’t Orbit but Fall the Same
Garth Bunse
Author Bio
Born in Tennessee. Raised under the shadow of Tuolumne County monster trucks. Ran away to Quito, Santa Cruz, New College and Oaxaca. Lives happily with his wife and son in the San Francisco Bay Area
Description
Atmosphere: We Don’t Orbit but Fall the Same is a struggle for survival between two disparate alien species that hinges on the unlikely collaboration between an ailing primate and an exiled dreamer.
Kora Green’s species has lived eons, bound across shared hallucination and in denial of their physical bodies. When she begins to experience vivid memories of being awake, her community demands conformity and refuses to accept what she sees. But when a spacecraft from another solar system arrives, the heretic Kora may hold the key to their survival.
Dr. Phlox Swenno is trying to outrun an unspoken shame. His fellow ring-tailed Primalans view him as ill-equipped for his new life aboard a deep-space freighter, and by the time his craft reaches its destination, Phlox is suffering hallucinations and rampant narcolepsy. The planet they now orbit, however, incubates new and unforeseen dangers and the doctor becomes the only one who can read the clues.
Atmosphere becomes, at its deepest level, an allegory regarding the importance of memory, dreams, and forgiveness.
Book excerpt
Phlox Swenno crouched under a cluster of large red flowers. His sister sat on a branch below. He stared up at the large moon with its purple sphere still clear through thousands of glistening leaves.
“What kind of an idiot signs up for a trip like that? You’re going to contract your life out to them for ten years, and at best you’re awake for three months.”
Phlox answered slowly, “That’s only if the planet turns out to be uninhabitable.”
“They always are,” Inkk howled. “What do the companies care? They can afford to send out ten super freighters and have just one come back full. You’re going down in deep chemical hibernation. You’ll come out five years later, no fur, sick and unable to eat. That’s if you can wake up. Is there still a five-percent chance you won’t come out of hibernation at all?”
“Two, two-point-five,” Phlox said without meeting her eye.
He gripped the smooth branch beneath him tightly with his toes and let his body fall. Stretched downward the brown fur on his back looked red in the sun’s yellow rays. He was smaller than the average Primalan, so he felt more comfortable in the trees where physical size didn’t always matter. He wrapped his dark-ringed tail tightly and let go with his paws. As his body lengthened he listened, a slight smile wrinkling the dark fur on his cheeks. The constant buzzing in his ears signaled the start of the warm season. Hanging here, he was shedding off the last contractions of the winter and teaching his body, as Primalans did every spring, to forget the bitter cold.
Heavy raindrops cut through the air, pulling rust from the sky.
***
A glistening icicle. A seamless crystalline hull. The freighter stretched eighteen hundred yards throwing back starlight as it pierced the black. Dr. Phlox Swenno peered through a small window as his rocket glider skimmed above Splinter Sixty-Six’s cavernous exhaust ports and across the Hyyperbolt fusion reactors. His transport banked to the left, and fur rubbed fur as everyone shifted to the right. He jockeyed for position in the cramped cabin and was elbowed in the ribs. Someone kept howling. This was not the shelter of the forest. The glider’s flight stabilized, but some malan jabbed a knuckled paw in his back on purpose. And these thugs are supposed to be the finest of my species. He didn’t bother turning around, kept his eyes to the floor. The flight was almost over, and he knew it was best to keep his mouth shut, his tail down.
Three Primalans waited at the pressure lock. The tallest, wearing a red utility belt stepped forward, exaggerating the angle of his chin as he lorded over the new arrivals. He had dark brown fur, a stump tail and crooked hips. He walked slowly in front of each malan, nostrils twitching. He stopped, leaned over, and sniffed behind the doctor’s head. Straightening up, he barked, “You’re late.” Phlox said nothing and kept his tail in the formal position: tight around his right leg. “I’m Anthullo, second mate. Kase will take you up to your quarters. You’ll all join an orientation at five hundred core. Go.” Surprisingly, all the roughnecks quietly complied and stepped into single file. Boots on metal grates echoed up the long, cold corridor. Phlox uncurled his tail and fell in line.
***
“And if you do wake up, you’ll be lucky if you can walk by the time they tell you, ‘Oh, it’s time to turn around.’ The best you can hope for is a planet that’s a pretty color. It’ll be one more inorganic wasteland!”
Phlox had jumped down and grabbed her shoulder. “But just think about it—it’s a chance of a lifetime, to see another world… and what do I have to stay for?” His voice trailed off. A gust of wind stirred the smallest leaves while heavy tubular flowers hung motionless. Bright red zag flies darted around, and as they passed through the floral cylinders, the beat of their tiny wings was amplified. All around him, the air was loud with the drilling vibrations of these small insects. The sound grew deeper as the flies traveled farther up the hollow flowers and created a whistling effect as they flew out.
***
After the orientation ended, the doctor and a few others waited for the lift that ran up the craft’s spine. The hollow cylinder was seventy-five feet wide and stretched twelve hundred yards up to the medical labs, crew quarters and the main deck. He stood staring up, swaying slightly from nausea. There was literally no ground to stand on, no solid branches to hold, and he worried he wouldn’t remember even half the technical details he had just been taught.
Everyone next to him started leaping to the elevator when it was still twenty feet above them, even though it would continue to drop to pick them up, so when he stepped on a minute later it was already crowded. As the lift started upwards, a large malan jumped over the platform’s low mesh wall. He shoved Swenno hard and grunted, “Get out of my way, freak!” The elevator was packed and Phlox was unable to move, but the burly Primalan took his hesitation personally. “I said get the fuck out of my face, or do you want to become a chop-tail the hard way?” Someone laughed, cold and clipped.
Phlox turned and hopped the railing and swung down to the spine’s latticed walls. He assured himself this was no worse than any day down on Akkacia, but he could still hear the same malan howling. He shook his head and started making his way up, leaping and jumping as boldly as he could. The curving walls were covered with genetically manipulated branches, hydroponic scaffolding, glow lamps casting twisting shadows through unfamiliar crops, and strung throughout was a glowing network of bio-tubing. It was a poor substitute for a real forest, but it felt good to keep moving, swinging, and stretching. Procedural memory stirred familiar images.
Author Website
http://garthbunse.blogspot.com/