Ascending

Ascending by James Alan Gardner

This one is to all the gang from Clarion West ’89: I’m a lousy correspondent, but I still remember.

A WORD ABOUT OAR

Oar, the narrator of this story, first appeared in the novel Expendable. At the end of that book, she was left for dead after she grabbed an enemy and plunged with him from a window on the eightieth floor of a building.

To human eyes, Oar is as clear and transparent as glass. Although she actually has bones, muscles, and an assortment of internal organs, these were bioengineered to be indiscernible when humans look through her skin.

Oar’s ancestors were humans themselves, born on Earth around 2000 B.C. At that time, a collection of Homo sapiens were removed by aliens to the planet Melaquin, where the aliens gave these people a new home. The aliens didn’t explain why they did this, but they built the humans beautiful glass cities with self-repairing robotic systems designed to provide all the comforts of life.

The aliens gave these humans one additional gift: the people’s children were born as strong, intelligent glasslike humanoids who never grew old or sick, and who were tough enough to withstand damage that would kill normal flesh and blood. Only later did it become apparent that these glass offspring had a flaw: although their bodies could survive for millennia, their minds were not so long-lasting. Around the age of fifty, these people succumbed to so-called 'Tired Brains' — they lost interest in all aspects of existence, often just lying down and never bothering to get up again. They could still stir themselves if something remarkable happened, but for the most part, they remained catatonic down through the centuries.

Glass parents continued to have glass children, but in decreasing numbers. The population declined in cities, towns, and villages all over Melaquin — gradual extinction from pure ennui. By the time of the events in Expendable (the Earth year 2452 A.D.), almost the entire species had fallen into apathetic hibernation. Only a few were still young enough to have active brains.

In Expendable, Oar was forty-five… on the verge of her race’s customary 'senility.'

Now she’s four years older.

From Festina Ramos:

I met Oar beside a moonlit lake, just after dusk on the day I had murdered my best friend. She was tall, sad, and impossibly beautiful: like an Art Deco figurine molded from purest crystal.

Yes — she was made of glass. Looking through her, I could see the beach, the moon, the world… focused through a woman-shaped lens.

When I think about her, I can’t help perceiving her glass body as a metaphor. She was, for example, transparent as glass emotionally. When she was angry, she raged; when frightened, she trembled; when lonely, she wept. She was as open as a child… and people who didn’t know her often dismissed her as childish, unintelligent, bratty. Oar was none of those things — she was a fully grown woman with an intelligence high off the scales (she learned fluent English in just a few weeks), and her constant claims of superiority to us 'opaque persons' weren’t arrogant but heartbreaking: an attempt to convince herself she had some value in the universe.

Like glass, she was fragile. Not physically, of course: she was damned near unbreakable, and immune to disease, drowning, even starvation (she could photosynthesize energy from the weakest light sources). She was strong too — fast and agile. But mentally, Oar was ready to shatter. Thousands of years ago, her kind was created by unknown aliens in mimicry of Homo sapiens… but due to a design flaw (accidental or deliberate), the glass race always suffered mental shutdown by age fifty. First, a tendency to boredom; then, a growing listlessness; finally, a descent into torpor, a sleep that could only be broken by the most extreme measures and then only for a few minutes before senility crept back in.

Oar was on the verge of that abyss. Her whole species was. They didn’t die, they just grew Tired: turning into ageless glass statues, alive but dormant. As Oar approached the age when her brain would betray her, she fought her fate, she denied it, she raged; and in the end, it seemed as if she had found a way out. During a battle to save her world from extinction, she sacrificed herself by plunging from the top of an eighty-story tower, taking with her a madman who planned the destruction of her planet. I wept when I saw her body smashed on the pavement… but I told myself that by choosing death, Oar had avoided a more cruel destiny — the gradual loss of who she was, the dull fade-out to oblivion.

Her glass would have warped with age: the lens going dark, the mirror turning cloudy.

But I was wrong. Oar didn’t die in that fall — she was tougher than I ever imagined. Bulletproof glass. And now that she’s back, pursued by inhuman creatures with secrets to hide, the question is whether she can avoid mental oblivion long enough to save those of us who need her help.

Running from aliens, dodging the gunfire, trying to figure out what the hell’s going on before we all get killed… hey, it’s just like old times.

1: WHEREIN I AM NOT DEAD AFTER ALL

My Story

This is my story, the Story of Oar. It is a wonderful story. I was in another story once, but it was not so wonderful, as I died in the end. That was very most sad indeed. But it turns out I am not such a one as stays dead forever, especially when I only fell eighty floors to the pavement. I am made of sterner stuff than that.

Actually, I am made of glass: clear, see-through glass. I am therefore extremely beautiful… more beautiful than you, but you should not feel bad about that, because you cannot help being opaque. People who are not beautiful — or strong and clever and wise, as I also am — should take comfort from being ugly and boring, because you will never be Called By Fate to undertake Difficult Adventures. Fate does not invite ugly boring people to save the world; and if you do try to save the world (without being beautiful, strong, clever, or wise), you will soon die pointlessly — and how much adventure is there in that?

I do not die in this story. Those of you who have looked at the last page — which is only sensible, because you wish to make sure I do not make a long speech telling what lessons I have learned — those who have looked at the end will know that instead of dying, I win everything. I defeat the bad people, am adored by the good people, and get to say, 'I told you so,' as freely as I wish.

That is the whole point of being in stories: to have a Happy Ending.

My Technique

When I decided to present my story to opaque persons, I endeavored to learn what chronicling techniques are popular with your kind. My research methods were most diligent… which is to say, I waited for my friend Festina to leave the room, then instructed her computer to show me any documents she had written of a narrative nature.

Therefore, I have discovered that the proper way to write for Earthlings is to divide one’s tale into modestly brief sections with titles at the top, such as My Technique. This is certainly an Effective Literary Device, especially when addressing persons with a short attention span. The technique also helps one skim ahead for sections whose titles seem more exciting than the passage one is supposed to read next. Thus one can jump forward to read Facing A Hellish Maw before coming back to Conversing With A Little Man Whose Sole Amusing Quality Is That He Is Colored Orange.

Most importantly, putting many titles into a story makes it easier to find your place if you happen to use your book to smash an irksome buzzing fly, and you hit the fly so hard that pieces of metal and plastic go shooting out of the book mechanism, so then you are forced to put the story chip into a new reader and you cannot remember where you were.

That happens more often than you might expect.

My Resting Place After I Died

When I woke after my eighty-story plunge, I felt most horrible indeed. Many things inside me hurt worse than they had ever hurt before… which is not saying much, because this was the first time I had been seriously injured, but pain is more dreadful when one is unaccustomed to physical suffering. If I took a deep breath, sharp aches erupted all across my ribs, as if a dozen axes were chopping at me. And behold, I did have an ax pressed against my flesh: a beautiful silver one I have always carried as both weapon and woodcutting tool. However, the ax was not attacking me in any way; it simply lay on my chest, as if someone had put it there after I fell.

To be honest, I was glad to have the ax with me — it provided a sense of protection. For a brief moment, I tried to cuddle the blade more snugly to me as if it were a pet or a toy… but the pain of moving my arms made my vision blur with tears. Every muscle felt bruised to a pulp; I wondered what bruised glass looked like, but knew if I lifted my head to see, the agony would be more than I could bear.

Therefore, I just lay where I was. It happened to be a hot pleasant place to lie, with an abundance of soothing light. I am such a one as absorbs many wavelengths outside the visible spectrum. Radio waves, X-rays, and gamma particles are like vitamins to me, while infrared and ultraviolet are basic food groups. (I also eat real food, as produced by the synthesizing machines found in every community of my world. But when I am not having Adventures, I can survive quite well on