Swimming on the Sun

By:
GC Rosenquist

Ralos awoke first. One by one, the infinitely small cells that made up his hydrogen/carbon body came to life in the solar wind radiating from the yellow sun far off in the distance. It was a small sun, a normal sun, mostly hydrogen and helium, and judging from its color and size this sun was approximately half way through its current life span. That meant it would be growing much hotter and for a long, long time. Possibly many billion years or more.

That was a good thing.

Ralos had no idea how long they’d been sleeping this time. The slowness in which his body absorbed the protons and electrons that made up this new, alien solar wind told him that they’d been sleeping many millions of years. They were lucky to have survived this time.

When the red giant they’d been living in before went nova and they were blasted off into the void again, the universe was much denser than it was now and the distance between suns was smaller. There were many wonderful candidates nearby, an orange sub giant, a white super giant and a series of blue luminous giants. Ralos thought for sure that the blast wave would deposit him and his beloved into one of them quickly. But it wasn’t to be. And once they were clear of the heat from the initial blast wave, the frigid temperatures of the vacuum slowed their body functions and sent them into hibernation. Asleep, they could no longer affect the direction in which they sped. So they drifted aimlessly, their triangular bodies joined together at the belly like two atoms fused.

His beloved! Beautiful and warm Nus! They had been together so long that their shared memories couldn’t remember all the way back to the beginning. All Ralos could remember was that there was an unimaginably large explosion and then they were together as one being, searching the cold empty blackness for a blazing haven to live in. They lived off the heat from this massive explosion for countless eons, letting the expansion of the universe take them where it would. But as the universe expanded, it cooled and they began to freeze. Sleep came upon them like the slow death throes of a black dwarf as it loses its energy and light and becomes a dark, invisible cinder. At first they were scared of the sleep, they were afraid they’d never wake again and they so much cherished being awake, yet there was nothing they could do about it. They slept for countless eons after that and when they awoke it was in the welcoming heat rays of a yellow binary star system. As they approached the twin suns and came alive, they’d understood everything about the sleep; it protected the small fires deep inside their bodies from perishing until they could ignite fully again in the glory of another sun. They weren’t afraid of the sleep again after that.

Of all the suns they’d lived in, these first suns, the twins, they’d lived in the longest. It was just the two of them and there was so much room to play and love and live. They found, to their surprise, that they could ride the solar winds from one sun and travel to the other. So one sun became known as Ralos’ sun and the other was Nus’ sun even though they were rarely apart from each other. Sharing was always best.

Nus had given birth for the first time in the swelling, searing surface oceans of those twin suns. They were swimming among the plasma jets and boiling skin of his sun when Nus suddenly stiffened, spun over and sank into the fire. To Ralos’ amazement, she came up a few seconds later with a creature that looked just like her. She told him later that it was as if her body had been cut in half, leaving two of her. The same thing happened later when they were on her sun. They rarely saw their offspring after they were born but they could sense them with their minds. They were young and energetic and playful, just like them. And when her sun went nova, the blast destroyed his sun and they joined their bodies into one again and were thrown out into the coldness of the universe. They never saw their offspring again and the distances between them were too great to sense them with their minds. Deep down inside, Ralos and Nus had a feeling that their first children still lived and survived just as they had.

This miraculous reproduction happened in every sun they took home in and each child was different. Some were aggressive and angry; others were shy and elusive. And they all went their separate ways when the end came.

Now it was time to awake and live again. Reborn anew.

Ralos sent the tendrils of his mind into Nus’ and she stirred sleepily. She had survived and he was relieved beyond all emotion! Already he could see the dull grayness of her skin beginning to glow like plasma as her body absorbed heat from the small sun they were approaching. He could feel her belly warming against his and her hard, frozen body softened. Lived.

My beloved! Ralos murmured. My beloved!

Nus stretched her newly warmed body free of the stiffness of sleep and heard her lover.

Ralos, she said. We are awake again!

Her cognizance pleased him. She was unharmed from the effects of the long sleep.

Yes, my beloved. Look ahead. Our new home!

She looked and she saw the dim yellow sun in the distance. She also saw many planets circling in orbit around it. A solar system! They were coming in from the perpendicular and Nus could see four beautiful and massive gas giants on the outer edge and four smaller rocky planets nearer the sun.

It’s wonderful, my love, she said. But smaller than any sun we’ve ever lived in.

This didn’t seem to bother Ralos.

It’s small, yes my beloved, he countered. Yet there is plenty of room for us and that smallness means the sun will live longer.

Nus understood this and it invigorated her senses.

We’ll be awake longer than we’ve ever been! she said excitedly.

So much time to live and to play! he said.

And so much time to love each other!

***

The closer Ralos and Nus fell towards the little sun, the brighter their skin flared and soon their joined bodies looked like a white-hot arrowhead against the black foreverness of the universe. Their senses were fully alive now and their energy was almost limitless. The fires inside their bodies raged, superheated and bright, and the joy of being alive again set them into a playful spin. Round and round they went, holding on to each other and loving like they never had before.

In times of calm, Nus’ acute senses picked up a feeling she’d felt only once before. It was like a wave of fire washing over her, the collective energy of many billions of life forms coming from the third planet from the sun. Ralos sensed them also. They were intelligent. They called themselves human and were of many different races. He’d never sensed variety in a single species like this before and it enthralled him. So many colors and so many minds that think differently and yet they survived despite these differences.

Ralos and Nus would have to watch these creatures carefully. There could be much to learn from them. First things first, though.

Ralos and Nus saw the yellow sun below them. It flashed brightly with ghostly, glowing flares that came up out of the bubbling surface of its skin. The flares rose in great, blazing arcs that the largest planet in its system could fit through, then they stretched themselves thin like the blast wave of a supernova, broke into two parts and fell back down into the sun again. The magnetic field generated by this sun was impressive and they both fully realized that this sun was plenty warm and large enough for them. Nus sensed that every second, many millions of tons of hydrogen was converted into helium ashes. In the process, millions of tons of pure energy was released…almost 400 billion billion megawatts every second! And the surface temperature was many thousands of degrees Fahrenheit!

It is a good sun, Nus said to Ralos. We will be very happy here.

I’m very glad that it pleases you, my beloved, Ralos said.

The sun’s gravity was strong and it captured them in its inescapable grip, pulling them down, faster and faster. Their lithe bodies glowed even brighter and were being pulled longer. It was too late now if they wanted to change their minds and use the sun’s solar wind to push them towards another star. But they didn’t want that. They wanted this sun and the long life it promised.

The spin of their bodies increased so that they resembled a fireball falling through a planet’s atmosphere. Faster and faster they fell, the sun’s immense gravity pulled on their bodies with such force now that they were nearly flat, thin strings. Unrecognizable to their true forms. Ralos and Nus held on to each other tightly, the nerves in their bodies flashed with pleasure and orgasmic joy. The entirety of their senses became completely consumed with it. This was the part about living in a sun that they loved the most…that first penetration. The searing passion, the scalding nirvana as they plunged through the corona, then down through the chromosphere, flames and ashes filling them with burning emotion and energy, and finally into the heaving, blister of fire that was the surface of the sun.

They were home.

***

The two lovers swam through the superheated liquid plasma on the surface of their small sun like two manta rays in the ocean. The surface was restless and forever on the move and they moved among the currents of fire joyfully, their two bodies separate from each other now but never far apart. They leapt from the boiling cauldron and into the air, the atomized energy that spent a million years rising from the core turned the sky above into a shimmering, mirage-like curtain of flame and heat. Then they plunged back into the plasma and dived down through the convective zone where that same energy was caught for a time in great circular currents and grew hotter and more energetic.

Sometimes Ralos and Nus dove into the blinding paradise of the radioactive zone and went down far enough to watch the massive core of their home shine like a pure white globe below them. Even for them, the heat of the core was too hot, well over 27 million^oF, so they could never swim all the way down into it and watch the fusion of atoms performing their mysterious magic. But it was enough to see its majesty from above and know that it was what gave them life and a safe home to live that life in.

Ralos swam behind Nus and saw her flapping her great fins as she went deeper into the fire. Her body glowed beautifully, like the core of the sun. She spun and arched erotically when she turned and it excited Ralos. He stayed behind her, but kept close. Then she threw her head back and darted back up through the blaze. He’d never seen her swim so fast before! He turned and followed, the fire all around him blurred to a smear of yellow as he swam faster, trying to catch his beloved. She felt him getting closer so she giggled and just before breaking the surface, she turned and swam just under it, jutting to the left and right. She seemed to be searching for something.

Ralos could feel the upwelling of hot streams coming from currents below, they pounded into his chest and they threatened to shoot him from the fire and into the air but he turned his body sideways, giving the current less body area to push against. This worked but it was clumsy. He saw that Nus swam right through the currents without changing her position. She’d always been the better swimmer.

Finally, she slowed her senseless meandering and floated to a stop. Ralos stopped next to her and touched his glowing fin to hers.

You are wonderful, my beloved! he told her. I could watch you and chase you forever!

And you shall! she said boldly.

Why have we stopped? Have you tired?

Tired? she snickered. I’ve only been teasing you! Look behind you, my love!

Ralos turned and saw the ceiling of flame above him lowering, falling on him, then he looked into the radiant distance and saw the ceiling coming at him like an unstoppable wave crashing upon the shore.

A swell! he shouted.

As the leading edge quickly moved over him, Ralos saw the ceiling of flame suddenly rise and it seemed to go up forever.

Catch me! Nus dared and swam up into the shifting body of the swell, her glowing white body shined brightly against the orange and yellow swirl of the fire.

Ralos, up to the challenge, flapped his long fins and shot up after Nus. He knew that if she made the top, he’d never catch her. The speed of the swell was equal to the fastest speed either of them could swim. It would be like swimming against a head-on current. He pushed himself, forced his muscles to propel him faster than he’d ever swam before and it seemed to be working. Nus’ glowing body was getting larger. He had a chance! Then her white-hot body disappeared and he knew she’d broken the surface. All he could do was surface also and ride the swell out and keep her in sight.

Ralos slowed as he neared the surface and then he slipped through and was on top of a massive traveling wave of plasma, the surface of the sun stretched out like a landscape of neon orange granules far below him. All around him was a forest of unimaginably high jets of gas and flame, spewing forth like angry volcanoes. In the far off horizon he saw a vast loop of superheated plasma rising into the air until the massive wave he rode moved him so that he quickly lost sight of it. The swell seemed to be getting faster and that meant it was falling back into the quasi-liquid surface. He searched for Nus and saw her far in front of him, on the leading arch of the swell. How fearless she was! The swell moved even faster now and it roared like a supernova, the boiling orange surface of the sun went by them in a blur. Nus turned her body and saw him.

Follow me, my love! she shouted and disappeared as the leading edge of the huge swell crashed back down into the sun.

Ralos watched as the swell fell away in front of him, miles at a time, and then his body was angled down, falling, and the surface of the sun came up at him like a slap. He spun and twirled in the depths of the fiery ocean, rolling under the force of the great wave. His fins twisted and furled wildly and he lost all sense of direction. It was useless and stupid to fight against such forces so he let the angry current throw him around until the heat from its anger was satiated and the calm flaming ocean they’d been swimming in returned.

At last, Ralos regained his bearings and he watched as the underside of the swell raced away from him like a living shadow. Then he remembered Nus! He’d lost his beloved! He called to her but she didn’t respond. She never did that. Frantic, Ralos picked a direction and began swimming. Harsh, boiling upward currents from below battered him violently; still he went through them without concern for his own safety. Nothing mattered except his beloved!

Finally, her mind entered his. Her voice was weak and exhausted but it was enough for him to follow. Ralos swam up to the surface and her voice was getting stronger. He was getting closer!

My love, she whispered. Come to me quickly!

Ralos detected her location and he swam so fast he was nearly flying above the heaving, scalding ocean.

Keep speaking to me, my beloved! he begged. I will be there soon!

My love…

She sounded so weak. His body trembled in fear. If he should lose her he couldn’t go on. To be without her and alone for eternity was like a sleep you never woke up from. It had never occurred to him before that he should ever be without her companionship and love. What worse thing in the universe was there?

Finally, ahead, he could see her floating limply on the surface. The beautiful white glow on her skin was fading to a pale yellow.

What is happening to you, my beloved? he cried. My beloved!

Again, she didn’t answer him, or she couldn’t answer him and when he finally reached Nus, her fading yellow body fell under the bubbling plasma of the sun’s surface. Ralos went down after her and was sick with what he saw. Her body was orange now, her fins flapped helplessly as she fell down and away from him. He could sense nothing in her mind. It was black and empty like the vacuum beyond. It was a void. He went down and positioned himself under her so that his body supported hers. He nudged her head with his and he tried desperately to rouse her. She didn’t respond. She just lay there, empty and silent.

My beloved…please! he pleaded. Please wake up!

As if in answer, the blast from a cross current pushed her body off of him and she fell again, spinning slowly down towards the fiery haze of the core. Ralos watched as her body turned black, shriveled to a cinder and was atomized. It was as if she’d never existed.

No! This wasn’t what was supposed to happen! Ralos cried. My beloved…we were supposed to live longer here than we’d lived anywhere else! We were supposed to be happy and play and love each other. This is a good sun. It was supposed to be different!

Ralos’ grief was deep and all consuming. His entire body was cauterized with sadness and he couldn’t move. He just stared into the perfect whiteness of the core of the small sun that was their home and remembered his beloved. Her loss was unreal to him and he expected her to come flailing out from the core, more beautiful and strong than she’d ever been. Reborn. He waited and he waited. For how long, Ralos didn’t know. A mere second could have been an eon or it could have been the other way around. He couldn’t understand how full of life she’d been, how strong she’d been swimming and how energetic she’d acted and yet she’d perished so quickly. Had the swell weakened her somehow, to the point where the heat that once gave her life finally killed her?

Then something tickled his mind. It was a voice, soft and low and gentle. It was a familiar voice and it was close.

Hello, she said. I am Los.

Los? Who was Los? Her voice sounded like Nus’ but it wasn’t Nus. When Ralos searched this new mind it left him puzzled. Parts of Nus were in there but it wasn’t her. This was a new creature yet similar to him. He felt her searching through his mind, looking for her own answers and then she spoke again.

Ralos, I am sorry about the one you call Nus, she said. I am of her. From her. She gave me life before she died. I am Los.

I am of her? Ralos thought. Her child! That was why Nus had been so weak after the swell. She had given birth again.

Out from the blinding whiteness of the core a figure appeared. The triangular body strobed dimly as it acclimated itself to the energy it needed to survive. The fins were long and graceful like Nus’ and her body was sleek and built for speed, like Nus’. She moved like Nus and was beautiful like Nus. But she wasn’t Nus. She rose up from the depths slowly but kept her distance, still not sure about him. Cautious.

Can we be companions? she asked.

I…I don’t know, Ralos said and swam away.

***

To keep his mind off the loss of Nus, Ralos spent much of his time watching the humans on the third planet from his sun. They weren’t as peaceful and intelligent as he’d first thought. There had been two terrible world wars that killed many millions and yet they’d somehow avoided complete annihilation. They were either a lucky species or knew when enough was finally enough.

Los would sometimes join him in his spying. She’d float next to him on the surface, tap into his mind to see what he’d seen and then she’d look for herself with her own acute senses without saying a word to him. She always stayed close by but she never crowded him or touched him. Ralos appreciated the fact that she gave him time to work through his grief. That’s all they had in this small, boring sun anyway…time.

He watched as the humans fought two more terrible wars and it made him angry. How they took life for granted. Didn’t they realize that the universe’s reason for being was for creating life? Maybe if each one of them had lost their own Nus, they’d think again before killing each other. When a conflict called Vietnam began, Ralos stopped watching the humans. He couldn’t bear to see an intelligent, sapient species destroy themselves. So he took to finding a swell and riding it as far as he could. There was comfort, somehow, in the danger, the speed and the memory he shared with Nus so long ago. And when that began to bore him, he took to diving down to the core to see how close he could get without harming himself. For him, life had become like sleeping while he was awake. He quickly found that the pain made him feel alive again. Awake again. But sometimes he just stared at the core, remembering that Nus had become a part of it and maybe someday, he would be able to see her again in its blinding whiteness.

He missed Nus terribly and couldn’t think of a way to get over it. This grief he felt was a horrible emotion, one that was new to him and he hated it. Having Los nearby helped a little but it wasn’t the same. His beloved Nus!

A short time later, as Ralos was down again testing the core, trying to stay awake, Los’ voice entered his head.

Ralos, please come up here to the surface! she said, her voice was trembling with excitement. It’s the humans! You should see what they’ve done!

The humans? He thought they’d made themselves extinct a long time ago. It sounded like a good way to pass some time so Ralos bid the white ghost of the core goodbye and swam up to the surface where Los patiently waited for him.

Ralos focused his mind and a moving picture filled his mind. He saw a high, vertical shape made of metal standing against a cloudless blue sky and then he saw fire and smoke coming out of it. The object blasted into the sky and went into space. This stunned Ralos. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

They’ve achieved space flight? he asked rhetorically.

More than that! Los said. Keep watching!

And Ralos watched. There were a series of landings on the satellite that orbited their planet and they walked on the surface in suits designed to keep the vacuum out! There was a small orbiting structure they called Skylab. There were unmanned probes to all the different planets and satellites in their solar system! There were shuttles that could be reused! There were amazing machines they put up in orbit that could see to the very edge of the universe! But, most amazing of all, many of the different races on the planet came together and built a space station that would gain knowledge and benefit their entire varied species.

This is a surprise! What do you think it’s all for? Ralos asked.

I think they’re planning on exploring the universe, Ralos, she answered. They want to ensure that their race survives. They want to live.

It reminded Ralos of the way his own species survived, by traveling from sun to sun, only the humans were too frail to live in a sun and would travel from planet to planet instead. This made the humans on the third planet very much like him. He was pleased that they’d gotten over that self-destructive hatred about their differences and they’d finally realized that it was those differences that made them strong. They were worthy now to spread their seed across the universe. And if they could do it then so could he.

Thank you for showing me this, Los, Ralos said.

I knew that they were important to you, Ralos, she said. I knew it would please you.

Ralos turned and looked at her. Los may not have been Nus but she made him feel like Nus did and he was grateful. It was time to be awake again and live.

You please me, Los, he said. I am sorry for how I’ve acted in my grief. I think you have saved me.

Can we be companions? she asked.

Yes, Los. I am ready for that now.

***

Ralos and Los were never apart after that. They watched from the rolling, roasting surface of their small sun, the humans on the third planet making giant spaceships and then sending them out to different corners of the universe. They started with their own solar system first, making the fourth planet livable to them with the help of great air/ozone machines, setting up small bases on a satellite they called Europa where wonderful forms of aquatic life lived under the icy surface. Exploring was as natural to humans as swimming in fire was to Ralos and he respected all that they’d done.

Hundreds of their years went by, then thousands, and soon there were just as many humans in space and on other planets in other solar systems as there were on their own planet. Ralos and Los celebrated each milestone in human history by swimming once around their small sun. Ralos enjoyed these long journeys with Los and often hoped that the humans would succeed again so that they could start another journey.

We don’t need a reason to swim together, Ralos, she finally said to him and she was right.

Hundreds of thousands of years passed, then millions, and their sun began to change. It was growing hotter and larger as it exhausted its supply of hydrogen. Ralos watched as the final humans left their home planet because it had become unlivable to them and he was sad. That once beautiful and blue planet was now dry and barren. Yet the humans were smart and had taken samples of every animal on their planet before they left. Their legacy would live on somewhere else until that sun exploded then they would move on again. Yes, they were very much like Ralos and Los.

Los’ companionship helped him deal with the leaving of his precious humans. He loved her now, as much as he had loved Nus, and he would be just as devastated if she died too. So he protected her and played with her and loved her and she did the same for him.

Hundreds of millions of years passed and finally came the time when their small sun started dying. It grew hotter and brighter and began expanding. In its death throes, it grew so large that it ate the nearest three planets and charred the fourth. Its solar wind blew the further gas planets away like dandelion seeds in the breeze and all that was left was their small sun, large now and unstable.

Ralos and Los enjoyed having more room to play and love in but they knew the end was near.

How much longer do you think, my love, she asked.

We will know, my beloved, Ralos answered. Until then, let’s live!

And they lived. Not taking one moment with each other for granted because they didn’t know how long their next sleep journey would be. They swam around their large sun, they rode atop the massive swells that riddled their sun, they dived down and visited their sun’s core and they loved.

Finally, their large sun shimmered, dimmed and began collapsing. The fuel that had waged its war against the immense gravity of their sun for ten billion years was spent.

It is time, my beloved, Ralos said.

Yes, my love, I know, Los agreed and they joined together as one being. They held on to each other as tightly as they could and when the surface of their large sun exploded and raced out into the universe, they were together, racing out along with it. The heat from the blast kept them warm a long time and they took advantage of that time together as well. There were things Los had never seen before like the beautiful, ghostly pink nebula that was left behind from their sun’s self destruction and the shining pin points of light that hung incredibly far in the distance.

We will reach one of them someday, my beloved, Ralos said. And then we will play and live and love again.

I can’t wait, my love, she whispered. But I am afraid of the sleep.

Don’t be afraid, my beloved. It gives us rest and protects us for our next life. The sleep is a good thing.

Los believed him and she wasn’t afraid anymore. He was good and he loved her. That’s all that she ever wanted.

Eventually, the intense cold of the universe began thinning and cooling the warm, life-giving blast wave they’d been riding on and the bright glow of their skin began fading, their bodies stiffening. The two lovers held on as long as they could but finally, their bodies froze and faded to gray and all that was left were the tiny fires deep inside their bellies.

Goodnight, my beloved, Ralos whispered.

Goodnight, my love, Los whispered back.

And they slept.