As Long As There Are Stars

Looking back, I’m tempted to blame it all on the taxi driver. If it weren’t for him I would have never decided to hitchhike to Moscow, never would have met Bolat, might have died long before having the chance to cause so much chaos. I’m not sure why everything always comes back to him. He wasn’t much to speak of: bandaged left wrist, glasses on a cord about his neck, hair both receding and graying. His clothes were threadbare. And he was Russian.

​

The truth of the matter is, of course, that he was not, actually, my first clue. I knew the universe was in danger long before that fateful ride, courtesy of a prisoner on the run from earth and its tyrants. I just didn’t know that I, personally, was in danger until that taxi driver let it slip. And something about that realization - that I was no longer a nobody, but a person of interest - set me running too.

​

I suppose I was naive. Or maybe it was intentional, the way I only noticed what I wanted to. Regardless, I’m sure I would have gone on blindly for many more months if it weren’t for those two words. To this day I cannot comprehend why he wasn’t more careful. Was he simply careless - old and absent-minded? Overly confident? The possession of a secret can do that to a person. Or had it been a warning?

​

Once and I might have never noticed. It was a peculiar city with peculiar people. But twice caught my attention.

“To Ludmila’s?” The question startled me from a deep sea of thoughts.

“Yes,” I answered without hesitation. But then a memory flashed and flickered forth from a month prior and my world started spiraling.

He had asked me that before. I’d chalked it up to living in a city that was surely smaller than it seemed, and having a language teacher who also took taxis. He likely recognized her address and just wanted to make conversation. But no, it was a city of millions. He shouldn’t know who I was visiting.

That greying, tattered taxi driver showed up to drive me only once more following that first hint that I had wandered too deep and was now well in over my head. I’d just about convinced myself it had been a coincidence. Just about. But not quite. No truth, no matter how unpleasant, can be ignored forever.

I frantically recorded every detail, the Southern Miss Golden Eagles blanket covering the backseat, windshield cracked, blue paint like the nail polish my mother used to wear. Daewoo Nexia. Plate 078 XYKX. The car smelled of citrus and gasoline. Outside my window the mountains flashed in a brilliant line, snow-covered and serene. I wondered if I was about to die.

​

I stopped taking taxis after that, at least ones that were marked. Anyone with a car was willing to be a taxi for the right price. There was something wild and maybe even beautiful about it, the way people let their lives intersect with those of strangers. On my home planet, no one lacking their own form of transportation was likely to last long. But on Earth they were stubborn when it came to letting go of the past.

​

I had never expected to end up on Earth. It wasn’t the sort of place that people went to on purpose. According to the histories, it had been almost entirely overlooked by the rest of the universe for the bulk of its existence. Such a fate was understandable; it was small and self-contained, with very little in the way of extraordinary to which the universe might draw its gaze. The inhabitants did what inhabitants do - they fought wars and fell in love, made discoveries and watched civilizations crumble. They did, eventually, advance in technology, but never to the point of uncovering much beyond their own solar system.

​

All that had, of course, changed in the Earth year of 2115, the events of which hardly need to be explained. The Rift. It would be unthinkable for any planet to suppose they were alone in the universe after that. But the uniqueness of Earth’s experience was twofold. Firstly, the Rift shaped the music of an entire generation in a way that only Earthlings could manage. The music of the Post-Alyptic Era swept across the planet and made waves far into the galaxy.

The second unusual result of the Rift was that, well, Earth had discovered that its belief in its isolation was entirely unfounded. It underwent an identity crisis, so to speak. Which, honestly, I understand better than most. That sort of shift can make a person (or a planet) do crazy things. Not that it was all bad. Earth, at long last, suddenly had the universe at its fingertips. Its doors had been forced open.

​

It would be foolish, of course, to imagine that no alien races had ever found their way to Earth prior to the Rift. A few had come and hidden their tracks poorly, and so had birthed the widespread superstitions about UFOs and alien abductions. Those who had held to such beliefs were duly vindicated in the days following the Rift. But others had come as well, in much better disguise, and whether they, too, had left their dusty imprints upon the annals of history remained to be seen.

​

Nevertheless, following the Rift, the status quo remained intact. Earth was, still, unimportant in the grand scale of things. Or so most people believed. But then I showed up.