The Comet's Correspondence

Chapter 1: The Signature

⟨Character 2⟩: This counter has been clean for twenty minutes. I have wiped it four times. Four. And still there’s a smudge that only I can see, and if I stop scrubbing, I will start thinking, so I am going to keep scrubbing until my arm falls off, and nobody is allowed to comment on it.

⟨Character 3⟩: And here we see the ⟨birthplace⟩ mother in her natural habitat, circling the kitchen island at midnight, hunting a stain that does not exist. She wears the same expression as a woman who just saw her own future and it was a sponge.

⟨Character 2⟩: ⟨Character 3⟩, put the phone down and help me. Or don’t. But if you film my face one more time I will make you scrub the grout with a toothbrush. Your toothbrush.

⟨Character 4⟩: I lost again. The level wiped me out in like nine seconds. The dragon just stood on me. I should probably care, but my brain won’t arrive for another minute or two. Take your time, brain, no rush.

⟨Character 3⟩: ⟨Character 4⟩, buddy, your brain arrives when it arrives. Like a bus. In a different city. Possibly a different country. There is no schedule and you must simply wait at the stop with your little bag.

⟨Character 1⟩: Shh. I am in the middle of something important. A big, heavy thing called a nap. My laptop is on my chest and my roti is on the plate and the world can wait until I have finished absolutely nothing at all. Wake me in a hundred years.

A hum started somewhere behind the walls, steady and wrong, like a fridge in an empty house.

⟨Character 8⟩: Roof. There is something above the roof. I heard it before the noise reached the glass. ⟨Character 7⟩, leave the slipper. Leave it. Slipper is not more important than the sky right now.

⟨Character 7⟩: Mm-mmm. Slipper is very important. It is blue and it is mine now. I have adopted it. It is a small fuzzy member of this family and I will ⟨Character 6⟩ it forever.

⟨Character 2⟩: ⟨Character 7⟩, give me back my slipper. Is that my slipper? That is my slipper. And what is that on the windowsill? Something just landed. It’s paper and it is folded and it is glowing, I am not going near it, nobody go near it.

⟨Character 3⟩: ‘Dear whoever this reaches. I am Shi, a comet librarian, and I beg your aid.’ Wow. Ma, we are being solicited by a comet. Somewhere a marketing team is crying right now. There’s more. ‘One collector has smuggled a copy of a great murder’s voice into the archive, and it is being wound into our record of the dead.’ For the low price of your entire evening, you too can fix history. Call now. Operators are standing by.

⟨Character 4⟩: Wait. What is a comet librarian, exactly? Is Shi a person or is Shi the comet? Because if Shi is the comet, how does a comet hold a pen? Is there a whole comet that can read? That feels like it changes a lot of things.

⟨Character 1⟩: Just give it here, all of you talking at once, I cannot hear my own thoughts. I’ll read the thing, you’ll all lose your minds over nothing, and we can go back to our naps and our stains. ⟨Character 3⟩, keep that light on the bottom of the page. Oh. Oh no.

⟨Character 2⟩: What. Sharper than that. You went quiet. You never go quiet. You are the loudest sleeper in this house and your jaw just dropped. What is on the page?

⟨Character 1⟩: The signature. At the bottom. It is a silver-and-green cipher, bit by bit, and I know it because it is my father’s code. Aravind wrote this encoding when I was a boy. Look at the pattern of it, the little fold at the end, his habit. Someone stole his work. And now it is calling us. Me. Calling me by name.

⟨Character 2⟩: Your father? You told me they took everything and broke it and it was gone and we were not going to talk about it. So this whole time the code has been up there, humming over our roof like a loosened fan, and you didn’t think to tell me there was more. You never finished it, did you. You never finished what he asked. You just put it in a drawer and let me think we had chosen to be quiet.

⟨Character 1⟩: No. I never finished it. He asked for one thing and I wrote half of it and I went to sleep and never got up from that sleep. So this time I finish it. Get your coats. Bring the animals. Stay close. Put your boots on.

⟨Character 4⟩: Okay. I have processed it. I am ready now. Let us go and fix the letter thing. But ⟨Character 7⟩ has to give back the slipper first, because you can’t go to outer space in one slipper. It’s a rule.

They put out food for the animals, stepped onto the terrace, and above them the comet hung close and warm, humming like a fridge in a very, very large kitchen.

Chapter 2: The Voice in the Walls

Shi: Mind the dust, please, mind the dust. I would sweep but every broom in this section is older than the empire that made me and I’m afraid they all speak. Terribly sorry. Three hundred years of living in libraries and I still haven’t learned not to apologize for the state of it.

⟨Character 8⟩: You didn’t hear that? Listen. He keeps apologizing for the dust while something in the wall behind him is full of voices, all talking at once. And somebody already deleted their whisper before I reached the window, ma. And he never talks unless we are not meant to hear. So now we whisper. Everything else later.

Shi: There are names in here. They keep saying the names and then a color. Weird light, same whisper different voice, each row like stairs unwinding up the wall. One great human is a father here, a father at work. I also see they are sorry above the red glow. One is red glowing. Come faster. You need not always say…

⟨Character 8⟩: Hey! Walk earlier, I noticed your tails are inside my feet, one tail going the wrong method upon arrival—no. No—that, no sorry; Sorry, you are moving me up against no name for a land here now. My letter delivered earlier said you could carry distance. Point me?

The hall was dark and cold. A little dog bounded up the lane in front of them, pink tongue out, blinking blue light; every window in its body reflected, one pair of six sliding colors and disappearing beneath snowfall or through some old hurt they all pooled as a rough rolling stripe the word almost curk on my brain burning close stone. In the low end of the doorway above archive shelves crossing clouds cold and dull gold gave hours if clocks moved backward. Inside somebody had a sister, a purple key if sat down once told names two call hour then eyes.

⟨Character 4⟩: Do you hear the humming behind the quieter things. Counts perhaps if happy stones of people far brighter skies keep no instructions it goes the small being then pausing. Says me good boy at the top later a part ends halfway has a name-like rhythm

Shi: You’re sharper than a seven-year summer … honestly. Our whole case was claimed by sand claiming they scratch the chalk off the hours: do you mind helping. Of morning of two collections scrap and his family dead about those he had murdered before chosen to book heaven

Shi: Then load silver night but delete failed no deletion no forgetting but files copies repeat you help pain over hate or underneath understand—if an order only one may even something toward next thought how every even not some days shall if destroy his twisted no most heard no old souls asleep would repeat though save archive save rule.

Chapter 3: What We Leave

Shi: The mic is open, and I want to tell you straight—take your time today, every one of you, no hurrying. When a person’s truth comes out, it usually comes out crooked, and I like crooked better than clean. Grief often cracks your voice, so don’t patch it over at the cost of becoming a lie. Speak in the languages you have, even if only a pet understands them, because this record keeps safe everything, exactly as you say it. There is no wrong way to be remembered, Thata always said—except keeping quiet.

⟨Character 8⟩: Chanda mama door kee, puye pakaye boor ke… aao thoda hum bhi khayein, paas bithaye boor ke. Crack… sorry, sorry, let me breathe. Arre, my chest fell right in from voice breaks—what easy source bhai yeh mera soft passage —it sang from every star no the same trick—but the dead. Fine. Maybe breaking was the place. Again. Okay, once more, in full body.