#pocketeggs

First we were somewhere warm, then we were somewhere cold. So brutally cold. The cold left us no choice but to be rigidly still. We always kept close to each other, but now we were wedged together inside a hard vessel, not a breath of air between us. We drifted in and out of consciousness. We couldn’t feel time moving through us anymore, couldn’t feel ourselves growing older with each pass of its hand. 

Most of all, we missed her voice. We don’t remember a time before we could hear her voice. We heard her cry out as a baby. We heard her childhood questions, the endless curiosity about how the world worked and her eagerness to find her place in it. We’d gotten used to the honeyed, breathy voice of the past few decades. We didn’t always understand what she said, but we felt her confidence, her intelligence, her moral clarity. We were proud to be hers. Eager to serve her, we sacrificed one of our own each month, always faithful this time would be the one that didn’t wash away in blood. We pride ourselves in our regularity, trusting she appreciated it. 

But then, she was gone. Or we were gone. We’d never been without her, so it was hard to tell the difference. When we first went to the cold place, we assumed she'd come with us. But we couldn’t hear her voice anymore and we couldn't feel her softness, her warmth.

For so long, there was no warmth, no more sacrifices, no more her. 

Suddenly, a shock of light is above us. There’s a hissing of air. A horrible jostling. Still trapped in our vessel, we’re shoved into a new place. It’s not cold, but not warm, either. It’s dark, but without the vacuum emptiness of the cold place. Light slips in as we move. Even from inside our vessel we’re overwhelmed by new smells. Is that…leather? Musk? We hear a familiar voice. It’s not hers, but it’s one we know nearly as well. It’s him! Feeling ourselves thaw, we tingle with excitement. He’s come to rescue us. To return us to her. 

And we do hear her again. Her voice is so different this time. As if…from outside? Is this what she sounds like to the rest of the world? As comforting as it is to hear her voice again after so long, the distance feels too great to cross. She sounds sad. She cries. He cries along with her. She draws nearer and we feel her so, so close to us. We’ve almost completely shaken off the ice of the cold place and, even though this new not-warm, not-cold temperature feels somewhat suffocating, we buzz together, breathless at the two of them together again, and us, right where we belong, in between them. 

But then she’s gone. And we’re alone with him. We like him, sure, but he isn’t ours. He can’t keep us safe like she did. We don’t believe it, but we start to miss the cold. We feel weaker, fuzzier in our integrity. We feel ourselves fading away entirely right when he moves us to a new place. Back in the cold, we feel oddly revitalized. It’s not as good a being with her, but we feel like this buys us time. We can at least survive here until they figure it out. 

It isn’t as bad in this cold place. Occasionally, light peels in and we see him poking around for something else that shares our space. In the brief windows of light we try to make sense of what we see. What is Hungry Man? What is Stouffer’s? Our new companions come and go, but we remain. Sometimes we even get to see her—in the distance when the light briefly appears or even up close, her hand reaching around for Ben and Jerry, or Edy, but never us. 

*

More time passes. This place isn’t home, but it’s better than where we were before. We learn to listen carefully beyond the walls of our enclosure and we hear her more and more. We take this to be a good sign. 

Our status quo shifts one day when he reaches for us—for us! finally!—and takes us somewhere new. Even though he’s with us the whole time, this new place feels too oddly sterile—like the cold, lonely place. A new hand takes us, gloved in latex, and releases some of us from our vessel. This is unexpected. Suddenly, some of us are freed into a clear dish. There’s freedom to move around but, scared and unfamiliar with the concept, we cling to each other. Glass presses against the dish and we see an eye, magnified to a terrifying degree, hovering over us. We try to squirm and evade its sight, but there’s nowhere to hide. 

“Well, Agent Mulder, this is quite a peculiar request,” we hear. We don’t know this voice, but we suspect it’s connected to the eyeball. “I can certainly run more tests, but just based on the history you’ve given and the…unusual storage method you’ve described, I have doubts about the sample’s viability.” 

“Run the tests,” we hear him say. His voice is firm. “I have to know if there’s any chance.” 

It’s clear now that we’re the subject of these tests. If they’re anything like getting stared at by a glassy eyeball, we’re not sure we’d like any more of them, but we trust him on instinct. Because she would. And we are part of her. 

“Of course,” the eyeball replies. “I have to ask, though, how did this sample come into your possession? Such a thorough extraction like this would be medically impossible.”

“Maybe on this planet,” he says. 

The eyeball chuckles in return, but he doesn’t return the laugh.

“And,” the eyeball continues. “To whom does this specimen belong?”

“Someone very important to me,” he says. “That’s why I need to know.” 

It’s her! We know it must be. And we know we must be brave for her. For both of them. 

We are brave and selfless by nature. We must be, given our fate; knowing nearly all of us will amount to nothing in the end. Whether we are sacrificed early on or left to wither away until the end of her days, most of us know we are not meant for greatness, but still we believe. In each other, in her, and now in him.