In an amalgam of beats from “The Fugue State”, Amecia Laurent flips back and forth from her childhood, to build a new constellation among the stars. One that pictures a departure from Earth to become a truly interstellar species.
by J.D. FitzRoy
Amecia Laurent broke into a run.
She ran and ran and ran. Kept running even when her legs burnt acid.
Laurent tripped and fell, slamming a knee hard against the ground. A pain shot through her body like a lightning bolt.
She pulled her knee up against her chest.
‘Let’s have a look,’ papa said, crouching beside her.
Little rivers of blood emerged from an island of grass and mud. Tears gushed a moment later as if the feedback had slowed through syrupy time.
The other kids were now way ahead.
Papa took out a cloth and wiped her knee.
At nine years old, school sports day sat like mouldy food she was forced to eat. The process of competing in physical rituals felt so needless. What did it matter if she was faster than the “Trite”, Terrible Thorne Twins? She didn’t want the adoration of a medal. And she rejected the peer pressure, finding strength in the rebellion.
‘It’s not so bad. See, just a graze,’ papa said.
‘Why do I have to do this? I don’t like it.’
‘We all have to do things we don’t like, Peanut.’
‘I want to study the stars, like you, papa.’
‘And maybe one day, you will.’
‘I’m too shorrrrt!’ She fussed.
He chuckled, mussed her hair to clean out her dusty conviction.
‘Come on, pick yourself up. The fight’s not over.’
She returned to her feet, pain already dissipating like a distant thrum.
Linked to papa’s contract, each corpo-school maximised competition and grading. Gearing them for thriving individualistic battles within the marketplace. Her passion for science tucked behind engineering and service skills. She’d seen the other kids thrilled by their little wins, but she just didn’t feel the buzz. She had no interest in corporate endorsements.
Holding her arm and brushing the tears from her cheeks, papa said, ‘Now, we’ll work toward the stars another day. For the moment, let’s see you finish. And if something doesn’t work, try something new.’
He gave her a hug and, with a renewed smile, she dashed back to the track to finish the race.
Then, as if a vaporising mirage of herself, she turned to an undiluted field of stars. This had started with the stars, it would end with them.
Sensing no ground underfoot, with a sudden shock, she looked down. Sure enough, her feet dangled, and all around… nothing.
Her breathing increased a touch, but she refused to panic, reminding herself of her locus. The location of her real body, back in the real world. She pushed her mind forward, forced senses to accept the transition.
‘Up there, Peanut. See it?’ papa said, as if from a distant memory.
‘Where?’ she asked, feeling like a little girl once more.
She sensed a long arm pointing toward a patch, followed it. She came to Rigel, the brightest star in the Orion constellation. And then, continued in a diagonal line to Betelgeuse, the semi-regular variable supergiant at life’s end.
Peter said, ‘Up there, the origins for all life through stellar chemistry. And upon worlds formed by the condensing remnants of star-formation, new chemistry and biology evolves. Up there lies the answer to the question of our existence. And the future for all life able and willing to reach out.’
He continued, ‘When a species first emerges into full self-awareness, it tries to make sense of senselessness. It tells stories to explain the world, inventing hungry gods and mighty monsters. Forces to be worshiped, beasts to be slain, and epic voyages to be undertaken. All the time, the stars look down, immutable, unchallenged, omnipresent. Yet, emerging from the world, the stars become more important than volcanoes. And new quests are undertaken in an attempt to meet others who’ve walked the road. These are the totems, as important to us now as the timbre of wind to the mariners of old.’
The image of the statue on Khione came to her then. The wonder and joy of looking upward, of reaching out to pluck the stars from the heavens.
‘Is this why the ship went to Ganymede?’
He chuckled lightly, ‘Oh yes. We’ve been left the most incredible of gifts.’
And not for the first time, she returned to Fury’s counterargument about gifts. ‘Be careful what you wish for,’ she’d said. ’We might open the box to a swarm of pestilence.’
Frankly, she’d never been able to reconcile her father’s grandiose musings with those of Fury. Those that declaimed vengeful or spiteful deities and cosmogonic myths.
Unable to pursue that offer, not for a generation at least, it had been a legacy handed to her like a baton.
A door opened…
‘Papa?’ she whispered to the stars, but only silence whispered back.
A new constellation appeared. She recognised it immediately. Six key stars shining like beacons. Ganymede’s random scattering of orthogonal towers had baffled many for so long.
Now a new constellation among the firmament, made real by imagining a starship to join the Great Bull, the Seven Sisters, Orion, Scorpius, and the vast ocean of other adventurous myths.
This is what the City had unlocked. The labyrinth to the stars. A new picture to cherish.
As questions hovered around her like puffs of cloud, she found herself zooming off, racing closer and closer to the six.
Each slipped past, one after another.
Until she streaked toward the final port.
As if a bird swooping among clouds, she moved steadily into the system. Toward the small, seemingly innocuous world. Into orbit, Thor vanishing behind, and the giant monster of Odin splashing the tumult of shadows in hot red blood.
I’ve come this far, now what? She asked.
Yet instead of slowing, Fugue continued to swell, banishing everything else, filling her vision with its darkly luminous mass. An eye as a hooded golden coin, opening to swallow everything into the blackened orb.
And in that moment, Laurent thought about another story.
‘There is this dreamtime story of the seven beautiful sisters. Hunters would leave honey and gifts for the girls who would always resist their approaches. One day, an old ancestor of fire named Rana kidnapped two of the girls and in doing, his fire started to melt their bodies. Yet their forms also diminished Rana’s fire. So he decided to put them far away into the sky. Shining less bright than they once had, the other sisters finally reunited in the heavens. Their love brought them close to Orion’s belt.’
Laurent returned to her childhood memories of the Orion constellation, she remembered something Fury had once said, ‘A shining seven is closer to the mystic mind’. And she imagined her father passionately joining their discussion. An osmosis of genetic memory, her mind bobbed around the swell of ancient stories told and retold.
Swimming amongst the speckled luminescent ocean, they never ceased to ease her worries, to put her troubles into perspective. But this time, it was different. The stars themselves were calling, inviting her ever onward, out into the unbound dark.
‘Why are you calling me?’ adult Amecia whispered back.
Out here resides the answer. Why did they do it?
Amecia had never believed, never wanted to believe that humanity was alone. What a chilling thought! That we could actually survive from ourselves long enough to reach the stars, only to find an infinite emptiness. Space to expand to be sure. To splinter, to isolate our various differences, perhaps. Locations to investigate new ways of living. Nonetheless, space that lacked the ability to be humbled, to learn from an older, wiser mentor. Perhaps to share strange stories of science and evolution and culture and, that big one, coming to terms with consciousness.
Someone to point, and guide them amongst the stars.
© J.D. FitzRoy 2026
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