The changes to the planet were memorialized by a host of machinery and drones, their sensors taking in more details (temperature, pressure, chemical composition) than human observation ever could. Still Linear recorded their daily explorations in their journal. Went as far as the crescent basin today. Followed the river farther southwest. Old-fashioned, ink on recycled pulp, pages they could flip through and words they could trace with their finger and reassure themselves: Yes, this happened. This was real. I am here. The writing was an anchor, ribbons fastened on branches, marking the undiluted passage of time in their solitude. Thought I saw a gull today, far out over the ocean. Turning and turning in a wide, endless circle. What are you doing here, gull? Were you sent here in exile, like me?
They had to be careful. Writing was almost like poetry, and poetry, the wrong kind of poetry, could get them in trouble.
The thing that beguiled Linear the most were the crystals. In the beginning they were barely worth taking notice of. Crystals grew everywhere Linear looked: geometrical inflorescences that sprang from the flint of the ground, some clear and some brightly colored. Linear assumed they were natural formations—like salt or minerals back home—and of no useful interest. But as weeks passed into months and the length of their sentence began to weigh upon them, they started paying attention to the most trivial of things in their environment. They began to notice patterns in the way these crystals grew. They spread in whorls that reminded Linear of sunflowers, or the succulents that sprouted green and pink in Bryar’s garden. This did not match any pattern of crystal growth that Linear knew. A hook upon which Linear’s orderly mind snagged.
In the absence of any other thing that could possibly occupy them, Linear found themselves obsessed with the puzzle of these strange crystals. The more they looked, the less sense they made. At certain times of the day, when the distant blue sun was in just the right position, they could see that the crystals glowed with a soft light that pulsed in flickering patterns. What did this mean? The machines that accompanied Linear said the composition of the crystals was no different than the ones back home—silicon dioxide and feldspar and all kinds of minerals—and they, with their infinite wisdom and knowledge, said that there was nothing unusual about the crystals. But Linear could see that this was a lie. Were the machines lying to them? Or was this even beyond what science and machinery could understand? Linear prised a crystal sample from its cradle for further study, plucking out the heart of one strange whorl with pincer and pickax. Under the lights of the colony dome, the crystals’ color faded, and then they turned opaque and brittle and crumbled into dust. Linear didn’t know what they’d done wrong. When they returned to the spot where they’d uprooted the crystals, they found it empty, an open wound upon the land. All around it, the spiral of the crystals’ kin had turned white as a grandmother’s brow, as though in mourning.
In the days that followed, a cloying, inexplicable guilt slid around in Linear’s guts. They would be wandering the desolate plains with no aim in mind when a welt of anxiety would strike them. They felt judged by the alien outgrowths, by the very ground itself. There was nothing rational about this, and Linear knew it. They were alone on this distant planet. There was no one and nobody here to cast judgment upon them.
No one except for Yare, of course.
Linear had not seen the god since they had slipped into the ocean on the day they arrived. At the start, they were relieved by this: it comforted them to think of the great depths that separated them and the dragon with their void-black eyes and rows of teeth. But loneliness had a weight, and the alien world seemed to grow in endlessness around them as time stretched on, greater and vaster than they ever could be. They found themselves spending more and more time by the water, staring out across the deckle-edged surface, imagining the sinuous form that tunneled through it in great coils.
As their torment grew over the mystery of the crystals, they started to think that perhaps the god would have some answers for them. But Linear was not really thinking about that—and maybe they weren’t really thinking at all—when they swept the ashes of the dead crystals into a shallow dish and brought it to the ocean’s edge. Their breath echoed in the tubes of their suit as they flung the white powder over the choppy gray. The ash floated for a brief second before it sank, dissolved, vanished. Linear stood by the chafing shore and waited for something to happen. For something to change. Time was meaningless in their exile. They waited for as long as it took them to start feeling stupid, for the point at which the lead of their uncertainty started to outweigh the swell of their hope. What had they expected to happen? Why had they expected anything to happen? This world owed them nothing, least of all closure. Their only job was to guide an invasion.
Linear turned to leave. As they did so, the ground under them rumbled, a development so unexpected they pivoted back in surprise. The ocean’s surface boiled with unrest. As Linear watched, its meniscus rose in a great gray hump, which a white-haloed head pierced. Ocean sluiced off the sides of Yare’s body as they rose ten meters upward and towered in the sky, alien and ineffable. One breath of wonder, one breath of terror. Then Yare leaned forward, hir scaly head the size of a house, and Linear froze.
The dragon spoke into Linear’s mind. Now I understand.
“What? What do you understand?” Linear heard their voice reflected in their helmet and almost got startled; it had been so long since they’d spoken that they’d forgotten what they really sounded like.
This land. This strange world. The rocks feel your pain.
Linear blinked. The sky above them roiled black with clouds, just as it used to back home. Filaments of lightning seared bright veins in the growing tempest. They swallowed, not understanding what the god meant. “Pain? I’m not in pain. I’m not—”
I see everything. The rocks see everything.
“I’m just trying to get by. I’m not—I’m not what you said.” Linear found themselves alarmed by the turn this conversation was taking. They just wanted to spend ten uneventful years on this alien rock, serving out their sentence without any trouble. No trouble, no surprises. They regretted coming to the water’s edge. They regretted trying to find an answer. They didn’t know what they were doing, they never did, what were they thinking?
You are afraid, Yare said. You are lonely.
Linear shrugged. Yare was right, and yet—who cared? What use did emotion have out here? There was no one but Linear the priest-penitent, and the alien planet, and an unknowable god who, not being human, could never understand the travails of humanity. Who would the emotion be for? Who would it serve? Better to keep it all inside. Expression was meaningless.
It is not meaningless, Yare said, as though zie could read their mind. Expression is everything. A poet should know that.
That last sentence struck something deep within Linear, and they recoiled as though physically wounded. They were stung, betrayed by the god trampling into such private, inflamed territory without asking. “How dare you,” they said, even though Yare was a god and zie could do anything zie wanted. “It’s none of your business. Don’t talk to me.”
Yare said nothing. Did nothing. Their maned, whiskered dragon’s face was impossible to read. Adrenaline tightened Linear’s chest and energized their hands and feet. Without thinking they turned and walked away from the god’s presence. Away from the tempest they had woken from the waters they had disturbed. Back to their living dome, back to the silence of the tomb. They regretted doing this. They regretted everything.