Two Solitudes

Vacation? Vacation from what?

I can't help but ask myself this as I trudge the light-blue sands of Icarus Island. It's paradise, to be sure. Made even more so by the tidal disruption event that's been occurring for the last hundred years breathtakingly close to this planet: Beta Carinae of the Carina constellation planets.

Turns out the binary star Avior somehow produced a black hole in-between its counterparts—if it hadn't always been there—and has been slowly sucked into the void, two diminishing spheres of light. Avior used to be one of the brightest stars in earth's night sky, but now it's a mere echo of what it once was, now that it's been reduced to two disintegrating red dwarf stars. The result, however, is absolutely stunning. This planet, this island, is a proverbial front seat to the unnaturally close catastrophe that bathes the entire sky in perpetual glorious sunset.

Not only is it beautiful, but also temporary: a capitalist's daydream, a sight only the rich can afford to take in.

I can thank dad for fulfilling that credential.

A wave of guilt washes over me, like the acidic ocean waves over the slowly dissolving beach stones. Here we go again, I think. I hate that I can't seem to simply relax and enjoy the exotic destinations he flies us to. Despite the locations' popularity or price tags, the refreshing vacation-promised peace I hope for remains elusive and I'm left frustrated. Frustrated at my siblings for not being more adventurous in a place like this? Frustrated that they and everyone else on this paradise island seem to have the peaceful connection I crave? Frustrated that, despite how perfect a family we look, I feel like I hardly know them. And they hardly know me. Our childhood familial relationship is becoming a thing of the past.

Or maybe it's the hordes of social media influencers that crowd places like this to satisfy their own lust for attention that puts me on edge.

I came to this place to get away. At least that’s what I told myself and any friends that cared to ask—which wasn’t many. Away from the monotony of my existence to seek out the ethereal, transcending indifference of tropical islands...in space. Though—and it's something I should have learned by now—places like this have its own kind of suffocating monotony that makes me restless.

I see a couple further up the beach ahead of me. They're playing some kind of disgusting game of tag, giggling at each other, hardly even trying. I roll my eyes at them, trying to push my eyes as far up into my skull as they'll go for good measure. Maybe the couple will sense it and take the hint.

They're yet another set of individuals that has somehow, despite how tedious they're acting and probably are, found a connection that clearly makes this place, or any place really, gilded with that fulfilling, rose-colored filter I hear so much about.

Please, I think to myself as I consider throwing myself into the ocean's incinerating waves, have some respect for us solitary souls.

I turn away from them to head back the way I came. Though, to my disgust, she stands down the beach in this direction. The pinnacle of what I dislike most about social media, the ultimate origin of why I'm no longer on such platforms, and the unfortunate intersection of looks and absolutely nothing else that makes for millions of likes and followers. I don't know her name, though I've already seen her too much in the two days I've been here.

Or maybe I've just noticed her more. She appears to be the only other living being remotely close to my age on this entire island. The only potential break from the self-sufficing solitude I've taught myself to feel. Just my luck that it's someone like her.

Still, I've got to go that way and better a poser taking photos of herself than the giggling wretchedness behind me.

I walk down the beach in the girl's direction. Her massive mobile is clutched in one claw-like hand. Her swimming suit is barely visible beneath her thin coverup.

We pass each other and I give her a curt nod. She smiles as we pass each other. For some reason, her smile strikes me as a bit...sad.

"Hello," she says in the pleasant way happy strangers do as they go about their day.

I feel another wave of guilt for such mental animosity against her. Snapshot judgements are my specialty. I've got to work on that.

-

I don't drink.

Sorry, let me clarify. I don't drink alcohol. But I'll drink as much juice or juice-like substance I can physically force into bladder. I'm an absolute snob for juice. And the one thing about this place that doesn't make me a raging angst is the food and juice.

There are buckets of it. And not just in the dining hall of the resplendent resort building, but also in charming little huts placed strategically along the beach front and in conveniently placed bars in the lavish swimming pools.

I couldn't tell you what's in the various fancy drinks with names like "daiquiri" or "mojito," but if there's a virgin version of it, I'll have it. Except for the one called "banana republic." That sounds upsetting. Banana juice? Some fruits are obviously not for juicing.

I wade up to one of these poolside bars to make good on my previously mentioned intentions with juice. I've successfully ditched the rest of my family. Again. Or maybe they've ditched me. It's hard to tell these days. The pool games we used to play are now an empty excuse to spend "quality time" with each other. It's a painful attempt to engender some remnants of a relationship.

I perch on a barstool, delighted that its height allows for my lower half to still be submerged in pool water. The bartender approaches and I've got to yell to make sure I'm heard over the screams and laughs of children splashing in the massive pool behind me.

"Could I have a virgin piña colada?" I say to the man.

I wonder if he's tired of making such a cliché sounding drink, catering to the unoriginal requests of bland tourists.

Despite whatever he feels, he nods then walks away to make my order.

"Thank you," I say after him, trying to seem less entitled than I feel.

I turn away from the bar on my submerged swivel stool and lean back against the cold granite slab to watch the various groups of kids or families playing in the water. It's truly a happy, blissful scene. Looking at these faces, it's no wonder why people pay such absorbent fortunes for even a few days of feeling how these people look.

It's an odd juxtaposition when I look past the scene immediately in front of me and take in the devouring destruction of Avior beyond the clouds and atmosphere of this planet.

My vision focuses back to the micro as I see the girl once again, the one that I apparently can't help noticing whenever she's in view. It's strange how people seem to subconsciously single out strangers that are most closely alike to them.

My stomach does a strange lurch as I see her today, as if it knows even her most likely shallow conversation would be a welcome break from time spent with my family.

Fat chance, that, I think to myself as I turn back to face the bar. The bartended returns to where I sit and places a stout, condensation covered glass of white colored icy fluid in front of me.

I try and thank the man again as he walks quickly away toward other patrons. He doesn't acknowledge me. I grab the glass and greedily shove the straw in my mouth, taking a long pull that brings the taste-bud embodiment of tropical paradise onto my tongue.

Suddenly, the girl is sitting on the stool next to me.

I sputter, lightly choking on the delicious cold substance trickling down my throat. She hardly made any ripples in the water as she approached. I quickly turn away from her as piña colada dribbles out of my mouth and onto my chest. Thank the black stars for the pool water that quite literally surrounds me and that I now use to quickly wash the mess off myself. Whether she saw what just happened, I couldn't tell, and she didn't give away.

I turn back to my drink and do my best to look disinterested in absolutely everything except the frozen juice in my hand.

The girl leans on the bar, her phone hangs in a waterproof case attached to a strap around her neck. The same bartender quickly comes up to her. He smiles at her.

"Banana republic," she says, phrasing her order more as a question than a command. The man, still smiling, nods and hurries away.

Gross, I think to myself.

Nothing passes between us as she waits for the bartender to return. When he does, however, she smiles pleasantly at him, takes her glass, and turns on her seat to face the tidal disruption event.

"How long do you think this place will last? With those stars disappearing and all?" she asks.

There's no one else within earshot of her question, but I still turn toward her to make sure she's talking to me. I'm a bit surprised at her initiating a conversation, she seems like someone who is usually the one approached and not the one approaching when it comes to interacting with other humans. I'm wrong again.

"I don't know," I say back, without much emotion felt or shown. "I'm sure some analyst came up with an estimate that was long enough to persuade the resort owners to build here, but from what I've heard it could be minutes from now or decades from now."

"It's hardly warm enough here to swim as it is," the girl says to me, scrutinizing the near and disappearing binary star. "If it gets much smaller this place will be a ski resort, not a tropical island."

Clearly our definitions of cold are very different. But she's right, the weather here has been mostly pleasant, which I didn't realize until now. I'm usually doing anything to get out of the heat in places like this that are usually so sweltering and humid.

"Where are you from?" I ask her, inwardly cringing at the fact that I might be opening a small-talk can of worms, which I make a point never to do.

"North-east part of the North American continent."

I'd have thought someone from the north would find this place hot. Though I grew up in the north part of the Rocky Mountains, where snow covers the ground for most of the year, so I can't say I'm a good reference point for these things. And I hate it when people impose suppositions on strangers when they have no empirical experience on what the imposée is drastically familiar with. So, I don't say anything.

"I'm Jeanmary," the girl says suddenly, holding out a hand with a wry smile.

I chuckle to myself as I take her soaking wet hand and shake it briefly. It's a funnily formal gesture in such an informal setting, donned in our swimming suits as we are.

"Amos," I say.

Here was an opportunity to politely excuse myself with a quaint 'nice to meet you' platitude, but I don't want to stop the conversation. Not yet.

"How long have you been here?" I ask.

"Almost a week, earth time," Jeanmary says, "though I'll be leaving in a couple of days."

There's a sudden sinking feeling in my stomach as she says this, but whatever emotion it indicates I quickly dismiss it as silly.

"Are you sad to be leaving?" I ask.

"Not really," she responds, "paradise can get kinda slow after a bit."

I look toward the horizon and take in the scenery, both celestial and terrestrial. I smile at her genuine answer. This place is beautiful. An oasis in an indifferent, exhausted galaxy. Yet I agree with her more than she could possibly know.

"It is slow," I say, "I know what you mean."

I suppose that's the point of places like here, and why people come. They tire of the rat-race, the consistent stream of work that's usually a prerequisite to the consistent stream of money these kind of people have. They spend most of their lives working with the end goal of doing nothing in a place like this. How many of them realize that doing nothing is not how life was meant to be lived? This gilded dream of theirs, filled with days of doing nothing, is a facade.

I think of the couple I saw dancing on the beach yesterday. For them it's probably something different. Perhaps an intentional attempt to slow down time together, time that hammers all too rapidly through the sweet moments of their relationship. To them, this is a time made sacred by the sacrifice of months or year's worth of saved funds in their effort to simply slow time down a bit. It seems obviously futile, but still, I hope that this becomes a cherished memory for them none the less.

For people like me, however, and apparently this girl next to me, doing nothing is tedious. It's boring. Made even more insulting by the fact that my real life also isn't spent doing anything that exciting or important either. I've really got nothing to vacation from or go back to. It makes me want to scrap it all—my day job, education, everything—and join an asteroid belt pirate crew. Maybe then I'll have something exciting to live for, a work that actually demands the passion of life and death hanging in the balance.

It's an entitled thought, I know. But still, I let my mind wander with it.

Jeanmary's phone makes a chiming noise from inside its water proof fold. She grips it though the protecting membrane, cutting off the chiming.

"Well, it's nice meeting you," she says as she slides from her stool, her ubiquitous but genuine smile coming to her face again. "I'm sure I'll see you around."

"You too," I say with a slight wave as she leaves.

She wades away, and I see my brother and sister-in-law swimming up to where I sit, other siblings of mine trailing behind them, like a family of aimless crocodiles prowling the shallows.

-

I can't sleep.

The day hasn't hardly been exhausting or interesting enough to make my body tired enough for sleep. I get up, prowl quietly through our suite of rooms, and out the door of our hotel room. Out of the fancy resort hotel. And into the night air of Icarus Island.

It never gets dark here, not completely. Something about the angle of the two stars of Avior. Even when the rotation of Beta Carinae turns Icarus Island away from the stars, both horizons are still illuminated. One has the glow of an ever receding sunset while the other has the light-streaked promise of a sunrise. It's like the island is the pupil of a massive ring of light and fire.

I walk toward the beach, passing no one. I think I prefer this place vacant. It's times like these, when I can have my quiet communion with nature without other people's existence interrupting me, that I feel close to capturing what I come on these vacations for. I feel like I'm on the brink of discovering that connection I yearn for, the one that binds me to the cosmos and assures me of my sure, albeit small, place in the universe. It's so close now. The day might belong to the couples, the families, and the friends that have found fulfilment in who they're with, but the night belongs to me to find fulfilment in where and who I am. The conspiratorial sense of belonging I want, the sense of something bigger than myself.

I continue to the beach, sure that something significant awaits me there.

I break from the sparse tree line and step onto the beach.

What I find shatters my paradigm and replaces it with annoyance. It's Jeanmary. She's already there on the beach. Taking timed photos of herself in the low light.

"Amos?" she calls, shattering the serenity of the night with her voice. "What are you doing up."

Too late to hide, I think. Try to be nice.

"Hey," I say, "couldn't sleep. Thought I might as well make the most of it."

She clicks a little remote in her hand and poses. Her phone, positioned in some kind of stand, clicks. I move to sit on a stone sticking from the sand.

"You, uh, want me to take that?" I say, a mocking hint finding its way into my words despite my prior commitment to be nice.

"No," she says simply. She walks to her phone, plucks it from her stand, then comes to sit next to me.

After a few seconds of silence, it's me who ventures to break it this time, motivated by equal parts genuine curiosity and persistent annoyance.

"I'm sorry, but I've got to ask, why is it that you do...what you do...with that thing? What do you get out of it? Posting pictures of yourself and your life for randomers to gawk at."

Jeanmary looks at me. Then back at the rolling acidic waves. She doesn't seem offended, though I know the question sounds harsh. I'm not sorry.

"To connect with people, I suppose," she says. "To be a part of a community."

I internally roll my eyes. More like dictate a community, I think. But how can I blame her, connection is a strong motivator for me too. It's why I'm here.

"And you feel that...that sense of connection through that little piece of technology?"

"Yeah," she says, still not rebuffed by my gruffness, but definitely firm in her answer. "I mean, what do you think the point behind this technology was? Wasn't it probably to make more opportunities to connect with each other? To talk in real time instead of painfully slow letter writing? And not just this innovation, but others too. The airplane, the radio, they were created to bring us closer together. And they did. The very existence of invention is to enhance connection."

It's an apt point. An obvious one. My drive to develop some kind of connection is a motivation that resounds through the past. Strong enough to drive brilliant minds to push boundaries and test the laws of physics.

"Ok, but don't you think it's come a bit far?" I ask. "We're making constant upgrades on those inventions nearly every month. Now they're taking us further away from each other. This place, for example. It's exclusive, only accessible via space-warp transit, far away from our own solar system. And your social media apps. How many of the people that follow you do you actually know? Really know? When did connection ever come where quality was replaced with quantity?"

"It's the best that I've managed," she says, cutting off my argument. I think I've frustrated her, but she's not aggressive toward me, not really. It's a tired kind of frustration, as if she's been anxiously, even desperately, searching for something cherished and has only come up with a portion of it. A faded polaroid of the thing she most desires.

She keenly understands the limitations of virtual interaction. I've misjudged her again.

"I'm sorry," I say, apologizing for digging into her, mostly to make myself feel better. But I do empathize and I want her to know that I do for some reason. "I'm sorry you haven't found something more...real...and lasting."

She stands up and rounds on me. "No," she says, "I'm sorry for you. You obviously haven't found anything at all."

Her words make my breath catch. They're true. They hurt. And I suddenly dislike her all the more for her sincerity. For making me see the folly of my own philosophy.

I don't answer. The harshness melts out of her posture as she sighs and sits next to me again. I half expect to hear her apologize, but then I realize that she just did apologize. And I accept it.

I don't like this girl, this stranger sitting next to me, but I don't hate her. The silence that settles over us isn't uncomfortable. It seems vulnerable in a way. I don't get up and walk away. I don't want to. In fact, there's really no one I'd rather be sitting with right now in this entire system.

Perhaps the reason why I don't like her is that she makes me confront myself, my reality. Because, much to my disgust, we are the same. And, despite how I condemn the way she goes about it, looking for the same thing I am. To boot, she's further ahead in this riddle than I am too.

I begin to feel something, a dusty old emotion pushing its way into my chest. It's feels edifying, like the excitement that comes from motivation. It's as if a previously hidden path forward has just come into view. I suddenly wish that this moment would last, that time would slow down so I could spend endless hours here with the unlikely companion I've found in this stranger.

It's not to be.

The sky suddenly pulses with light as the horizon on each side of us quickly flares, the rapidly darkens. A calm waring tone sounds around the island and lights flash on in the resort behind us. None of it is harsh or terrible, but still loud enough to make it impossible to ignore.

"Accelerated tidal disruption warning. Please join your personal party and report to your designated warp vehicle at your soonest convenience," the voice says with an inviting tone.

So, it's happening now. fancy that. Avior has finally begun to collapse. If it's a rapid cascade then the temperature of this planet will drop below what humans can endure within a few days. The resort is done for, but the warning is an early one. It's no emergency, simply a vacation cut short.

Jeanmary stands. I do the same.

"Well," she says, "nice meeting you, Amos. You know where to find me if you ever get on any socials."

I nod and smile to her.

She walks away, not toward the resort, but to the hangars. She has no party to meet up with.

I turn to head back into the resort to find my family and then to our various warp jets.

But I hesitate. I don't feel any inclination to go to them, no motivation to join them for our departure. I couldn't even say if they would even feel that for me.

I turn back to the girl, watching her get further away.

I make a decision then and there. The only thing I've found in all of my searching to make this void of an island bearable, was her. Even if our interactions only amounted to a mere matter of minutes.

Yes, I can hardly stand her. She has a way of getting under my skin in countless ways, but better some kind of relationship than the absolute absence of one, despite how alluring our model family might seem.

I jog after the girl. She turns back, curious as she hears my footfalls in the sand.

"Hi," I say awkwardly as I catch up, "could I, uh...can I come with you?"

She scrutinizes me. Then grimaces. She takes a long breath, clearly considering my request.

She smirks and shakes her head.

"Yeah," she says. She turns to continue walking toward the hangars.

And I follow.