I came down to the disaster zone in a bubble-skiff, launched from a Responder-class galaxyship in high orbit. It skips and bumps on the turbulence. There are six of us, each wearing the flat white uniforms of United Galactic’s Crisis Response division.

Outside the tempered window, the Nerian settlement Galapos burns. My synaesthograph’s goggles telegraph emotions from the rest of the crew: yellow-grey anxiety, black fear. Color bursts from their heads like sparks. An iridescent fog condenses near the grab handles on the ceiling, little bits of soul leaking into the atmosphere.

Lonnie, my team’s newest member, sits across from me. Our knees almost touch in the cramped skiff. He mutters prayers under his breath frenetically, holds a small crystal obelisk in one hand, his leather-bound book of Recitations in the other. White-hot particles stream from his chest, absorbed by the pendant’s spiritual vacuum.

“Leave it,” I say over the dull roar of the skiff’s engines. “They’re full enough.”

Lonnie jerks in his seat as if he’s been caught, but stows the obelisk in a black case near his feet. It joins countless others, all filled with obelisks containing the emotional weight of millions, fuel for the synaesthograph’s injector: bottled hope to help victims of tragedy move past their trauma.

“Clean up your signature,” I say, noting the cloud of yellow surrounding him. “It could interfere with the infusion.”

He nods, hair flopping across his face. “The sacrifice of many is hope for the few.” A direct quote from Recitations: the book of Comforts, chapter 29, verse 11. He presses a button on the gauntlet on his left wrist, his own personal obelisk set within, and shudders as the energy passes into his blood. His aura fades to blue. He closes his eyes.

“Sure,” I say, as if thoughts and prayers were an actual sacrifice.

The skiff shudders, engages landing protocol. I prime my own gauntlet and let calm fall over me like a coat, deadening me to the distress I’d surely witness outside.

The bay doors at the shuttle’s stern crawl open. Winter rushes in, carrying with it the red mist of intense pain. We exit into a grassy park that’s been converted into a med bay. Nerian doctors, blue-skinned and half our height, tend to patients, their forehead antennae waving. Blood stains the snow.

“What happened?” Lonnie asks.

“Does it matter?”

On a bench, a young Nerian girl in a white dress hugs her knees, clutches a bloodstained teddy bear. A notification flashes on the synaesthograph’s goggles, alerting me that its algorithm has detected an image likely to draw sympathy, and sends it to our donor engagement team on the galaxyship. The pain of the innocent drives the empathy of the privileged. (Manipulations 17:31).

“Right,” I said. “Let’s get to work.”

* * *

We stay at Galapos a week, then take the skiff back to the galaxyship and make the slipstream jump to our next assignment. This is my life. Disaster to disaster. Trauma to trauma. A messenger boy carrying manufactured hope to places people only care about because they’re featured on the quantum-distributed newsstreams.

A Thetolian dies of plague, thick mucus clogging his fragile lungs and respirator vent ducts. I initiate the synaesthograph, tubes connected to his wrists and neck; electrodes on his oblong head. He smiles, cradled by the goodwill of the galaxy. His aura shifts like billowing smoke from red to blue. My personal obelisk feeds me a steady stream of comfort through my wrist gauntlet, sweeps away the echoes of his gurgling breath.

An Avandii child clutches at my face, fur thick and matted with orange blood, body broken from one of the great mudslides that afflicts their dying planet.

“Your pain will not be forgotten,” I whisper to her (Comforts 89:2). She gasps as the synaesthograph takes hold, babbles in her singsong language, and dies before her aura clears. The rains start again. In the next valley over, another mountain begins its collapse.

My obelisk grows hot on my wrist from overuse. Morale must be kept high.

A young human male bleeds out after a raid by political extremists, ecstasy on his face, knowing now that someone, somewhere in the quiet universe cared for him. He makes the Orion’s Arm evening quantum stream. His teary-eyed parents weep their devastation to the cameras.

After they sign the Likeness Release form, I tell them that his sacrifice will fuel the recovery of thousands (Motivations 8:52). The obelisk stutters on my wrist. Instead of a rush of calm, it’s a phantom of what should be. A stranger’s hug in a thunderstorm. Wet feet on a winter day. I submit a request for service, but maintenance claims all is functioning properly. A note accompanies the technical report, “Sometimes, we must feel reality to appreciate relief.” (Flagellations, 16:31).

In response, I file for a transfer from Direct Action to Supply Chain Support before our next mission.

* * *

On the Garbusken, an intergalactic luxury station orbiting Sagittarius A, I stop at a local congregation for collection duty. The priest, a young human — rare this far in the galactic core — preaches: “Our only salvation is through continued prayer. It is the most effective direct action we have available.” (Motivations 1:15).

Incense curls from a golden thurible. Expensive projectors paint the cosmos on the cavernous ceiling. Sagittarius yawns in the cracked sky above a hulking marble altar where a pile of dead obelisks sit.

It’s a ridiculous expense, transporting a massive slab of rock 62 light-years for an energy transfer disguised as mystic tradition. Non-religious obelisk refills are performed daily, for free, at any public library. Diffuse particles stream from the chests of the faithful. The priest thanks them for their sacrifice.

The service ends. The congregation chats, laments that there’s nothing else to be done for far-off suffering. They return to their unworried lives no worse for wear.

I approach the silent altar, sweep the glowing obelisks into their case.

The synaesthograph does nothing to ease my disgust.

* * *

Ⓒ Jacob Baugher