Cage of Souls

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

“When the world was young, or so we are taught, men believed that events were guided by the stars, which dictated the fates of individuals and nations. People believed that the stars were a secret language the future was written in. When the world was older and more sensible, it was believed that the stars were our future. Men made machines to take them beyond this world, did you know that? We peopled the stars with creatures like us, and set out to meet them. Such boundless optimism.” He fidgeted with the telescope’s mechanisms again. “It was all in vain, of course, the machines, the boats and vessels and birds and devices that were thrown up into the night sky,” he murmured. “For the stars are very far away, and however fast our machines carried us, it was not fast enough. The gaps between stars are so great that nothing can cross them quickly, not even light, which is fastest of all. We never found a way to skip between the stars, to meet the people we were sure awaited us there. That broke the back of our optimism. The spirit of man was crushed by the distances between the stars.”

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