When he’d first presented Evie with the design, she’d told him it was impossible. But he’d smiled, like he knew she wouldn’t be able to resist the challenge, the unprecedented task.
A year to the day he was heading to the “house” to pick up the keys.
She smiled at the terminology, it helped her retain a sense of scale. After all, what she’d done here was as much madness as science.
Evie watched from her monitor as Karl’s shuttle ferried him down the Lightbridge. He would be alone here, after she’d gone.
Her engineers had worked miracles to do this. Karl’s last message had said he’d pay her double for hitting his craziest deadline. He was already paying her more than she could quite comprehend.
The Lightbridge danced on the screen, a beam of pure white energy phased against an obsidian background – the only way the screen could even attempt to relay the information.
When she was gone, he would deactivate it and be cut off for all time.
She tried to remember how the structure had appeared to her on entry: a dark marble tower inside of six force walls that kept the radiation out.
So beautiful.
The docking lights flashed on the terminal, telling her he was in the hatch. She looked around the white room she’d just finished decorating. Filled with books, sculptures, paintings – some landscapes, but mostly of women – such a civilised cave to be walled up in.
It was hard to feel she hadn’t just wallpapered in echoes.
She watched the cameras as he entered the airlock. His spacesuit was completely black, and its tinted visor left you practically blind. The suit did most of the walking. On the schematics it provided, he’d have had some concept of the building as he’d approached, some understanding of the massive undertaking they’d completed.
That was important, that their work be acknowledged. No one had attempted anything like this before, she couldn’t just forget that.
She still had questions, but his motivations were none of her business. She couldn’t forget that, either.
Evie watched as he left the airlock, and started to remove his suit. Karl Hauser. She remembered their first meeting, in his hotel room on Europa. A hundred and fifth floor suite with generous gravity and subtle recalls to Earth.
“I don’t understand your madness,” she’d said, after he’d told her what he wanted her to do. “I mean, has anything been diagnosed?”
He’d given her a thin smile, probably reserved for just these reactions. Sitting across from him, she’d leaned back and winced at her bluntness. “Sorry.”
He understood his designs were demanding. “I know what I’m asking you to do, can it be done?”
She’d walked to the window, her dark dress contrasting with the stars beyond. Black leaves were woven into her silver hair. The latest fashion on Europa was, according to Karl, nostalgia and guilt. These remnants pervaded and contaminated everything; his views weren’t unfamiliar to her.
Eventually she’d turned. “It can be done, but it’s… vandalism.”
He’d given her an even thinner smile. “I want to build a room that I can be alone in, entirely on my terms. That’s all.”
“But why this?”
That was the question he’d never answered.
Evie waited for him in his new office, dressed casual, before prepping for her suit. She tried not to think of the harsh technology around her, the walls buzzing, the shields dancing in their lurid quantum interactions. Her bare feet pressed into the cold floor, and she embraced the sensation. The feeling, so delicate, could so easily be lost.
Karl smiled as he entered the room. Not an old man, but his youth had left him. His hair was fading to silver when once it had been black as the space between stars. He still stood tall, lean. They exchanged a firm handshake. “It’s everything I wanted,” he said, looking around, “and more.”
She handed him a document, a symbolic passing over. “Here it is,” she said, “a home carved into a star. Now that’s privacy,” she allowed a tight smile.
A look he gave her told her he appreciated the scale of the achievement. “Thank you for this.”
“Just a shame it’s a tomb.” When he didn’t respond, she added, “What if you change your mind?”
“I want to be alone.” His tone was clear and firm. Beyond this, there was no explanation owed.
She shook her head. They had no relationship beyond this contract, only really knew each other by their reputations, but as she walked past him she stopped. This had become far more than curiosity. She had glimpsed something in these walls, in his designs, something in pain.
“Please tell me why I built this? Why am I leaving you here?”
His expression became raw, as if he was struggling to evade thoughts that had unbearable depths. He looked at her until it seemed to hurt. “You’re from one of the colonies?”
Evie nodded. “Trans-Neptunian.”
He looked away, glancing at the paintings with something strangely wistful. Some of the landscapes weren’t terran, but otherworldly skies framed in optimistic strokes. “Took my family out there,” he said. “Wife, a daughter – she’d be your age now – went through the Heliopause, headed to the far colonies. I was going to help design the new sun...”
Her eyes widened.
To his design, the floors were black. He stared down at a reflection that haunted the marble. “They never made it,” he said softly. “And I never wanted to make it alone. Now every person I meet out there is a ghost that reminds me of another ghost. Nothing is as real as what I lost. I want no part of it.”
He looked around; whether he was moved, pained, or overwhelmed, she couldn’t tell.
“But I was determined to build this. She wanted to live in the stars, I told her we could live in a star, and I never got to show her what I meant.”
Evie understood that plans fell apart; she hadn’t gone into space to carve up stars.
She gave the room a last extensive look, then gave him a final nod. “Okay.”
