431. Olamic Peace

Kyra ejected her cord from the dataport on the second suspension capsule with sober prejudice. Teal data flickered before her weary eye, reflecting the world entire on the inside of her curved faceplate, and then, as if in mimic, faded from view of eye if not of mind: One enclosure held Zoe, the other Ceru; one living, one olamic. Kyra turned. She could have cried. She wanted to be elsewhere, anywhere but in this private moment. Managing a solemn ecclesiastical whisper, as if the spoken word, by tone, could heal or harm, she called, "Von."

Excerpt from an interview with Kyra on earth: I felt like I was looking at the past, as if I was in a sacred cathedral lit by votive candles, a place majestic and ancient, a place I didn't belong. I wanted to change places with Von. I wanted him to see his son first, not second. I wanted him to be close, not me. To see a father viewing his son, the father alive, the son not, to know there is nothing to say, to feel that rarefied air, a mystical place, surreal, out-of-body, a place beyond language is like standing on the edge of a sunset, your feet ablaze with a white heat, your eyes drowning in the depths of the deepest ocean, your shoulders and arms as stone of ancient statues. Such was a moment I would neither trade for all the universe nor wish to ever experience again.

Von raised his hand as if to reach for what he knew would not reach back, as if the tension in the air itself could be grasped, could be held as a rope in the lightness of moments dreamed but not imagined. Kyra, standing sideways, opened her arm, her face without smile or frown, a mask to match a time where seconds were minutes and minutes were hours. Von approached, looked at Kyra. She nodded. Placing his hands on the cold clear glass, his eyes as crystals, Von leaned over, removed his helmet, and with words not heard, kissed the glass and closed his eyes. Kyra stepped aside and commed Bravo.