Archive of Our Own

A light clicked. Jacquelyn awoke to the off-white glow of the day cycle and blinked the sleep from her eyes. The arrival of the light shot a jolt of nervous warmth through her chest as she rose from the cot, press-fiber sheets rumpled from the tumult of her anxious rest. Her fingertips skipped over the clean gray wall, flicked open the small panel behind which her few effects lay and landed where the vestments of her rank hung from a steel stud. She dressed in tense silence, the white silk of her slip susurrating over the golden hairs on her arms as she drew it over her underclothes. Then came the embroidered smock, machined needlework like cream foaming on milk. Finally, the soft, recyclable anti-static shoe-sock hybrids that appeared every morning.

Dressed, she impatiently tugged the tines of the blue bakelite comb through her thick brown hair. Each stroke a reminder of the hitching, awkward way she’d been when she’d first arrived on the oblong satellite she and 3,500 others called their home. She couldn’t recall life having been any easier in the creche. But she did remember the slight, brown girl who had been the first to speak to her with any kindness. Casinova had seen her as a sister before she had learned how to work out the tangle for herself, and the small comb had been a gift when she’d finally joined the women’s Novitiate ranks. To match her cerulean eyes, Cas had said. Jacquelyn had gone red in the face, not yet used to the open, easy grin of her fellow Aspirant.

Good enough, she thought, then quickly plaited the smooth, shining strands into twin braids and settled the final piece, a white lace cap, upon her head. Jacquelyn didn’t hold much love for the Aspirant’s uniform, had never liked the way it clung limply to her, the way the deep cold of the experimental rooms prickled her exposed legs and arms. But that wouldn’t matter soon, she privately thrilled. She vibrated with purpose as she faced the door to her cell.

Today was the day she received her Lab Safety Certification and donned the colors of a full Sister in one of the Orders of the Deimos II Astronomy Research Lab.

Aspirant’s book in hand, she navigated the corridors of the Women’s Dormitory automatically, called and bobbed respectfully to those she encountered along the way to the Refectory. Clad in the respective polypropylene reds, blues and blacks of their Orders, the older women nodded in response, but few spoke. The Sisters had morning experiments to attend to already and there were few dressed in anything but white when Jacquelyn entered the narrow, bench lined gallery where all took their meals.

“Jackie!” A now-familiar alto struck the silence as Jacquelyn inhaled bites of gleaming, congealed red fruit between the tables of spectral signatures on the pages in front of her.

“Coherence, Aspirant Casinova,” she replied, in keeping with the prescribed greeting that had been burned into both girls. Jacquelyn turned from the book balanced over her tray to eye her friend. The tall, curly haired woman grinned broadly and shuffled inside her own white brocade.

“Aren’t you excited, Jackie? Today’s your day isn’t it? Which Order do you think you’ll be chosen for? I hope we get picked for the same one, I’d miss seeing you every day,” she groaned.

Jacquelyn, for her part, didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t here to make friends, but she did feel warmly toward Casinova. She had one goal - to become a Sister. Supporting the unceasing Research. Running the experiments, serving the Primary Investigators who designed them and kept the whole, sprawling complex lit and warm with purpose against the silent night outside, this was her destiny. Nothing else could interfere with that.

Her morning meal gone and with no more time to spend before her appointment in Photonics, Jacquelyn excused herself and left the other Aspirant to her own devices. Cas still had a year or more of Remedial Lab Training to complete before she would be allowed to re-test for her own Certification. Alhazen save her, or she’s destined for surface duty and no Order at all, Jacquelyn thought. As she ascended a ramp from the Women’s Dormitory into the upper arm that housed the Optics Facilities, not far below the roots of the great Telescope the cool ceramic floor tiles gave way to seamless vinyl studded with lanes of raised dots. She hardly needed them to guide her steps, having tread these halls every day for nearly a half a decade.

She passed through several branching corridors, each a portal to a different Research discipline. Machining, The Data Hall, Optics Fabrication, Wet lab. Each artery and vein brightly colored for purpose in the body of the Deimos II Lab. She took several turns and spiraled upwards, close to the edge of the complex. The location guaranteed minimum vibrations from the activity buzzing deeper within the Lab. Some of the wall panels here emitted a gentle clicking sound that pulled her along to room 27, Photonics Lab III. Arriving, she yanked uselessly against the door. It was heavier than it looked and took more from her to finally open. Inside was the small antechamber she had expected, a common protective measure for anyone who worked with the electromagnetic radiation sources ensconced further within.

What she hadn’t expected, however, was who greeted her arrival. A woman in grey fiber trousers and soft heather turtleneck, auburn hair pinned back with no cap – heresy! – sat at the desk adjoining the door to the inner chamber. Green eyes flashed to hers, and Jacquelyn jolted. A Primary Investigator. Unable to meet the emerald gaze, Jacquelyn pretended to study one of the posters on the wall announcing some colloquium or other. She had thought she might meet an elder Sister, or perhaps a Research Assistant at most. What could this mean? Slight smile lines, but no explanation, were evident on the older woman’s pale face. Instead, her ruby red lips issued the girl’s fate in a clipped mezzo-soprano.

“Jacquelyn Erastis, please sit.” Taking the Primary Investigator’s indication, Jacquelyn sat in the steel chair opposite the melamine desk, vibrating slightly. On the desk laid a single sheet of translucent orange film. The sight of the glinting embossed stamp signifying her Certification made her stomach leap.

“Well. Let us not waste time. In light,” her face quirked, “of your physical aptitudes, repeated high test scores and Research Directorate needs, I am happy to grant you your Lab Safety Certification, Jacquelyn. You will be joining the Order of the Ablates,” the Investigator announced flatly, cutting off the title. “Congratulations, Aspirant.”

The uncovered Investigator kept speaking, but Jacquelyn couldn’t quite hear her over the high pitched ringing in her ears as her heart fluttered erratically. Her eyes prickled. Inwardly, she even forgave the colloquial use of her new Order’s title with the gift of news that she would soon join it. This was it. She was about to fulfill her purpose for the Lab. And the Sisters of the Black, she could hardly believe it. She was destined to work with the optical tables themselves, in the Photonics labs. Join the few who placed the mirrors, collimating lenses, focusers, prisms and most importantly –

“Jacquelyn.” The Primary Investigator marched clinically into her reverie, evaporating it. “You will properly begin next week, where you will be added to the experimental schedule. In the interim, we will prepare you.” Jacquelyn shivered under the electrostatic charge of the green eyes cast upon her. “You understand what that entails, do you not?” Her stomach lurched sweetly. She understood too well. This was all that she had studied for, tested for, what she had prayed every night to achieve. She would not abandon her call to serve now. The head of auburn hair across from her gazed at her levelly. “Then sign here, Sister.”

“Yes, Investigator!” The legs of the metal chair screamed against the floor as she jerked to her feet and reached for the stylus that rested near the trimmed, painted fingers. Fingers that guided the fates of all the souls at the Lab. As she penned her name some feeling Jacquelyn wouldn’t ever interpret crossed those green eyes, then was extinguished.

Two of her new Sisters entered then to escort her to her destiny. They must have been waiting just outside for me to sign. Did they follow me here? Jacquelyn fidgeted at their approach, unable to guess either of their identities while in their Research vestments. The Ablate Sisters had always frightened and inspired her in equal measure, with their gentle words and strength to shoulder the deep costs they paid to serve. Their fitted long sleeve shirts and flowing skirts, floor length aprons, boots, gloves, head caps, everywhere the dull luster of ebony fiber-reinforced polymer kept sliding out from under her eyes. Something tiny in her wouldn’t let her gaze openly at them even as gravity seemed to lens all the light in the room inwards.

In front of her now, Jacquelyn focused on the only part of the Black Sisters that reflected in the overhead lighting. Two pairs of crimson eyes flashed at her from the surface of the black eye masks of their – her – kind. Irises, conjunctiva and lashes all an unnerving deep red, iridescent against the sable that further concealed the Sister’s identities from cap to nose. The strange contours of these eyes were not unlike the dense rock that housed the Lab, high-albedo bodies hung in a black void. They did not return her look and, as always, they did not blink. The Sister on the left then broke the growing silence with a warm, practiced tenor:

“Aspirant Jacquelyn” – she jumped – “Mind prepared, you join us on the path ready to dedicate your body to our great purpose at last. Enter the inner sanctum so that you may be bodily cleansed and dedicated to serve the Research Lab as an Ablate Sister of the Blessed Emission.” Jacquelyn realized then the Primary Investigator was no longer present, had left without attendant ceremony or even another word to the trio. When had she left? Jacquelyn accepted the fact despite her surprise at the sudden departure. The sign on the inner door made the danger to any other than her kind clear. It read:

The room beyond, where it happened, appeared no more than an ordinary, cold lab space with the exception of an angled, padded bench sitting aside the optical table. The table itself appeared familiar, prepared for a split-beam reference-object holography experiment, one she knew well from her studies. Then her gaze tripped over the solid-state pulsed ruby laser placed at the far end of the room. Its red-eyed emitter was quiescent, the holy source she would soon attend further guarded by a shutter.

Her heart took off in her chest and goose flesh prickled her bare arms anew. Its xenon flash lamp and optical pumping system made her want to drop to her knees in supplication. Some of these components were relics and she eyed them with a wave of anticipation and desire that propagated up her torso and down to her groin. She’d been allowed glimpses before, for her studies, but never this close. Never so close that she could have seen herself reflected in the glass casing that veiled the core of the device, the potent aluminum and chromium oxide doped rod. Perhaps the Sister nearest Jacquelyn sensed her blasphemous twitch inside her silk cocoon, because she took Jacquelyn gently by the arm and led her towards the bench.

“Come with me, dear. It’s just us in here, now, and we’ve brought many girls through. Deep breaths, that’s right. You’re doing so well, that’s it. Legs out, sit here.” She cooed and lowered Jacquelyn onto the awaiting bench saddle-style and reached down for the restraining strap coiled on the floor. As the black band was looped around Jacquelyn’s lower legs, a thought streaked through her. On the cliff of true womanhood, just one step left. How lucky! Mercifully, her runaway nerves were cut off as the shadow that was the Sister at the far end of the room began to softly sing:

The next strap that the black clad hands affixed across Jacquelyn’s midriff bunched the embroidered silk smock upwards. This both exposed her shaking thighs to the cold, hyper-filtered air and pressed her groin firmly into the padded seat. Jacquelyn began to feel oddly weightless. Troughs and peaks of fear, excitement, arousal and shame interfered within her stomach. She was brought back to herself, cheeks burned with embarrassment in the realization that she was painfully hard, cock pinned between silk and the unyielding bench. Wicked girl, she thought, to debase this holy dedication, this cleansing. She was relieved the seat hid her shame.

The next strap held her slight chest fast against the bench and nestled her chin gently against the steel hollow at its top. Swaddled as if a babe again, an acidic lens of fear and uncertainty focused inside her, a child’s remorse. What was she doing, what was happening? Was service worth this? The final black binding answered for her, secured over hair denuded of her Aspirant’s cap for the final time. It was a kind of comfort, the certainty of what was about to occur. The black bands that encircled her white-clad flesh were a vow, a promise kept after so many years. The Sister at her side had tidied Jacquelyn’s braids behind her. There was no sense in damaging them, after all.

“Hold completely still now, dear.” As if she had any choices left; Jacquelyn’s entire body was pinned fast. A slide, itself carrying film impregnated with Silver Halide entered her field of view and was placed roughly two hands width away from her face. Through her ascendant overwhelm, she recognized the distance. It would be exact. The shine on the glass briefly reflected her own eyes back to her. She saw her own pupils for the last time, blown wide with excitement, dread, and another, shameful feeling. Jacquelyn’s heart fluttered shallow and rapid in her chest and in the member that ground against the bench. She was in hell, plagued with a sinful need to cant her hips. But for this to happen properly, Jacquelyn was certain she had to be absolutely motionless, to deny herself and receive the cleansing she had earned.

To truly betray her body’s self preservation instincts for the first time in the face of the Holy Emission.

The room was doused in complete darkness and the laser power supply activated. The slight pop of the xenon flashing to plasma inside its glass cage the only sound in the room. A cool, gloved hand softly placed on the small of her feverish back the sole comfort Jacquelyn had against the unavoidable. Silence reigned for heartbeats interminable before the shutter was flicked away. Then, blinding red, scintillating crimson overtook and burned away every trace of blues in her, eyes flooded with 694 nanometers of worship inducing light. The lance of ecstatic red agony punched through cornea, iris, lens, retina and spiked into her macula. It blazed up the corridors of her optic nerves to engulf her head entire, pain eclipsing the shame and dread.

It was rapturous, far too great for her mundane form to bear. It was everything she had been raised to adore, groomed to serve. She had been told it would be like this. Their descriptions paled, cerise paeans to her bloodshot reality. Her mind ran and pooled like so much eddying slag from the sanguine beam. Was she praying? Was she screaming? Jacquelyn’s thoughts were sublimating into vapor under the focused blaze. This was her final test, her baptism in holy fire. If she could only submit to it, her position at the side of the Primary Investigators was secured, she could serve the Research, she would have her purpose, she would fit –

She is small again, just stepping off the transport shuttle into the cool airlock of the Lab. Tall women swathed in black welcome her kindly with open arms. The walls are red, cochineal tile under her feet. The Sister’s eyes are kind but she can’t see them. There is no one else. Jacquelyn could never escape this moment, this instant of searing holy radiation, would never see another thing again to disrupt this vision of pure vermilion from her mind’s or any other eye. She let go then and let the bloody tide carry her under. From somewhere else, Jacquelyn felt every muscle slacken, relieved of the full-body rictus she’d unknowingly held from the fear and endless throbbing pain in her head.

And then, utter darkness. The power supply spooled down and the silence that followed smelled slightly of cooked flesh.

A little more than two weeks later, the newest Sister of the Ablate Order awakens in her room at the start of the pre-morning cycle. Her only cue is the click the ballasts makes, she no longer has the light to go by. She hums a small, wordless melody as not-quite-steady fingers slide along the smooth wall, past the hinge of the small panel behind which her effects lay to collect her official garments that hang from a steel stud. The firm plastic rustles over her skin as she pulls the fitted shirt and pants over herself. She fastens the apron, hem murmuring against the floor and steps into the harder, but still recyclable, boot & sock hybrids that had arrived every morning at her door in the days since she had been made into a Sister.

She absently runs the small plastic comb through her hair until it is smooth and tangle-free, then braids and settles the black cap upon her plaits. She steps away from the gift Casinova gave her, mind on the Research that awaits her and nothing else.

The Sister warms as she approaches the waiting stand that holds her most sacred vestment, her eye mask. Her fingers brush along the velvet lining that will hold her close for the remainder of her years at the Lab. The face of the mask is smooth, a plastic film developed and processed quietly in the dark on the day of her certification. She will never see the holographic image embedded there and yet what it has captured is intimately familiar to her. A red hologram of Jacquelyn’s eyes gazes blindly out into the room. Her pupils beatific with reverence and fear, an irreversible transmigration reflected wholly in dark carmine.

The Sister dutifully picks up the mask and fastens it around her cap to fully eclipse her own sightless pupils, hook and loop holding fast to ensure no slippage during the experiments she would be administering today. She’s up to two a day already, Sister Harran has praised her endlessly. A faithful, hard working Sister will be the salvation of humanity, so says their Primary Investigator. She swiftly gathers herself up, the angle of the useless overhead light causing the ruby visage to dim still further. The Sister smiles, then turns to the door and to her work.

There are three Sister’s Orders of the Deimos II Astronomy Research Lab, in addition to the cadres of Primary Investigators and Research Assistants, and various unmentionable male support staff. They are as follows.

The Sisters of Ares, after the host planet the Lab revolves around, embedded in its captured asteroid. These Sisters have their Hearing and Sight maintained and their Tongues removed. In this Order are the electricians, the computer techs who keep the cycles of data analysis online, balancing the power needs of the optoacoustic experiments and the great Telescope against the life support systems that keep everyone alive. Clad in Red, and paradoxically, never in the Primary Investigator’s favor.

The Order of Zeiss, or Zeissites, as they like to be called. They retain their Sight and Speech but are made Deaf. Machinists, lens grinders, fabricators. They ensure the endless equipment requirements of the Investigators are always to hand and do not mind the noise of the great grinding wheels at all. Dressed down in Blue, these Sisters tend to the comedic, the familiar.

Finally, The Ablate Sisters of the Blessed Emission. They may Speak and Hear, but cannot See. They play a critical role – bulwarks of the dangerous conditions of the experimental rooms, handling various radiation sources and, occasionally perform as wear parts for the Telescope. Many are maimed, even killed. Their faith is as deep as the Blacks they wear.