FIRST FRAGMENT
Once in a great city, green and kind,
There lived a gentle demi-god(dess),
Big heart, strong mind.
Any and all in pain and flawed
May seek and find
All woes their voice corrade.
No matter the guilt,
No matter the pain,
The misery will wilt.
This hero they had a love far away:
A divine of poesy, who at midday,
Spake rhymes of love and tales of play.
Today the hero had tasked a friend,
Their closest, most dearest, most cherished friend,
A task so particular, necessary, crucial
That they dare not trust
Anyone other
To go their lover,
The next kingdom over,
And deliver this poem of love:
My Divine of Poesy,
Forbidden wisdom woman,
Speak to me your words of gold
and in blood will I cover
your rhymes.
Speak to me unspoken words:
unspoken to any lover, any suitor, any one
who came before,
and my blood shall remain in my heart,
ever rich, ever yours.
The hero took care to warn their friend,
Their closest, most dearest, most cherished friend,
That if he muttered amiss word once,
Slip once, one 'stake,
Just one and one only is all it would take!
To dismiss the poem's divine divinity,
As if spat of mortal's mind
And not of trans-mundane other.
"Take care to remember the poem, my closest, dearest, most cherished friend,
for if you deliver a mortal love
to her Other soul,
With no hesitation, no pity, mercy, nor pride,
She will strike thee down,
And I will hear that you have died
Delivering my love to her."
Their friend departed right away
For the next kingdom over,
And at the end of each day,
By the river he sat to recite the poem:
"My Divine of Poetry,
forbidden wisdom woman,
speak to me your words of gold
and in blood will I cover
your rhymes.
Speak to me unspoken words:
unspoken to any lover, any suitor, any one
who came before,
and my blood shall remain in my heart,
ever rich, ever yours."
There he had it! He remembered each line!
So onwards he rode in confident stride
To show the Divine with honour and pride
The love of her Hero's divination design.
Before the goddess he did recite,
Each word shook wall; they shook! O, might!
The Goddess herself, she rose in height:
"These words I bite,
I chew and chew,
And taste of you,
but none of my light!
What have you done!
O no, O blight!
"This love is of mortal,"
she sobbed in fright,
"And I am of Other!
O, cold! O, night!"
Her arm she raised; it blocked the light!
And downward descended two fingers pinched tight;
She plucked up the Hero's most dearest of friends,
And on her tongue dropped,
He met his requite:
O shamed end.
-------
Back in the city
The Hero caught word:
"What a pity," one said,
"He is dead."
He is... dead?
"O, madness! O, shame!
My Goddess did maim
my bestest, most dearest, most cherished of friends,
And I am to blame!"
Right in their place the Hero's body fell lame,
And there they still lay,
day after day
after day after day,
until one day,
The King himself descended to say:
"My Hero, it pains me to see you this way.
Leave this Kingdom before next day
and find your will, your heart, your ray,
to help these people,
your city, your play.
I gathered your things,
and I cast you away.
"Goodbye, my Hero.
I await your most certain return.
Into the ground their fingers sank deep.
Claw after claw the Hero did creep
for weeks and weeks,
red pain did reap upon each creek,
each rock, each twig
they ever did meet.
Finally, at last,
They found a cave!
A cold, uncaring, uncomfortable cave,
but shelter, sweet shelter
from the sun, O! shade!
And there they did lay
for weeks and weeks
'til one tired day,
a traveler peeks in
and sits dow
SECOND FRAGMENT
n to say:
"O hello, good stranger,
What are you this way?
You have clearly
O so clearly!
come a long way!
"Here, have of my rations.
It'd do you some good
to nourish thyself;
You look as sickly as one ever could."
The Hero lay still, not even a peep,
no stir, nor talk, nor breathe too deep,
simply ignores the traveler to sleep.
"Well, in case you find thyself in need,
here I'll leave the goods for you.
Farwell, good sleep."
"Well, frankly, sir, I don't give a damn. Tatrayus is due for an implosion. Your Elites know it, too."
Tatrayus: a megalopolis city that covers the surface of its dwarf planet which, at this point, has been mined to its own doom. The only "surface" remaining now stands as tall, Cathaysian mountains between which the abyssal trenches of the Depths carve deep. On top, the Elitist skyscrapers puncture the atmosphere. In the far reaches of the Depths of District Gamma:Ward V, the (mostly human) cyborg Xetonon miners stir for revolution. Entire blocks of their buildings, which are constructed along the steepest cliff, are falling into Gladdare Abyss, the District's most unstable trench.
Valin Soto, a new, experimental cyborg "Tekkon", belongs to Tatrayus' secret faction of quasi-legals: legal assassins, thieves, and the likes who serve the corporate Elites. During a briefing with Valin's Elite, a massive swarm of tiny... bugs? bots? infiltrate his penthouse. They pour into the Elite's skull and render his brain a porous sponge from the inside-out. And after, the other Elites scattered throughout Tatrayus one-by-one meet the same fate.
As if this wasn't concerning enough, during their investigations in the Depths, Valin finds themself experiencing flashes of memory that don't belong to them. As the human infiltrates the non-human, there arises a slew of challenges to the morality of their actions. Who are they really? Who are friends, and foes? Will they find the place they truly belong? Can they learn what love is?
Hugh's eyes fluttered open to the sharp pattering of the gravel off the side of the car. From his reclined position, the treetops of the surrounding forest were all that he could see through the window. He shifted his gaze to his mom as she steered. Despite the dryness of his freshly awoken voice, he croaked, "Are we here?"
"Oh, hun," Angela blinked herself out of her trance. "I didn't realize you were awake." She glanced at Hugh through the mirror, and smiled as if strings had lifted her cheeks that way. The pattering stopped, and Angela took off her seatbelt. Hugh sat up to see their surroundings. He looked down at his feet.
Angela reached back and touched Hugh's knee. "He'll be so happy to see you."
Hugh's face softened. He grabbed his book bag and slung the strap around his shoulder.
"Let's go, then," Angela patted Hugh's knee before turning back around and leaving the car.
Hugh's feet crunched against the gravel path. Looking at the ground, small blades of grass pushed through the pebbles to greet him. They leaned to the left with the passing of a small breeze, and moments after, the same, but stronger, wind flushed the hair from his face. The trees' leaves roared in the gust.
Angela took Hugh's hand and sighed, "Come on, honey."
With his eyes glued to the ground, he followed Angela down the row. So many beautiful vases and bouquets of flowers sat idly with their headstones. Some were fresh, and some had withered away. Hugh wondered why people wouldn't just plant them instead. It would make more sense, he thought. In fact, he couldn't help but wonder why all graveyards weren't gardens. They would be the best ones.
They stopped in front of whom they came for. Hugh read the stone, as he does every time they visit. J. Croft. March 20, 1979 to September 21, 2018. He looked back at the ground, and something new caught Hugh's eye this time; a small tree seedling had pushed through the soil from the crevice where the base of the headstone met the earth. Its baby leaves were the purest green, and glew in the sunlight. Its happiness spread to his face.
Hugh dropped his book bag onto the grass and sat next to it. He watched as Angela did the same as everyone else. She prepared the freshly purchased bouquet of white roses and lavender in a tall, ceramic vase and placed it on the base of John's headstone, then lit a few small tea-candles next to it.
After stepping back to admire her arrangement, or maybe to critique it, Angela smiled. Her lip quivered and her face contorted. After collecting her composure, she planted a kiss on top of Hugh's head as she lowered herself to sit next to him. Gesturing to his book bag, she asked, "So are you going to show us what you were so eager to find in the forest yesterday?"
Hugh's face lit up. Pulling a tattered leather journal out of his book bag, he flipped through its tea-stained pages until finally landing on the page he sought. "This!" He planted his finger on a messy sketch of a large, fallen tree. Above the sketch were the hastily scribbled words, Secret Garden. Beneath it, Hugh had also drawn a series of mushrooms, seedlings, saplings, and flowers.
"Wow," Angela said, rustling Hugh's wind-blown hair. "Impressive find, kiddo. Where was it?"
Hugh smiled a little. "Not too far into the woods. You can't really see it in the drawing, but it was huge!"
"Oh, I bet!" Angela proudly smiled and laughed as she examined Hugh's drawing. "What kind of tree do you think it was?"
"Probably an oak," Hugh threw his hands into the air to imitate the tree's hugeness. "Because it was so big that it must've reached higher than all the other trees when it was alive."
---
A large oval hole to the east-as my pocket compass told me-dug into the sea of treetops that, otherwise, continued uninterrupted for miles from the view of my bedroom window. It caught my attention when I brought the boxes of my belongings up here.
Johnny was my notebook, and he has been the guide for all of my adventures. He remembered where things were so I wouldn't have to. On a new page, I noted that the anomaly was to the east. While I'm on the move, Johnny stays in my book bag, along with my compass, pencil case, some tape, and other random items for my adventures.
The adventure that the hole in the forest's ceiling beckoned to me threw me down the creaky, wooden staircase, and then through each of the rooms of the house. Mom was nowhere to be found, though, until her familiar voice echoed from the open front door as she called, "Ray, help me move the dinner table in!"
Outside, mom was standing at the back of the open moving truck, waiting for Uncle Ray to come and help her. She must have seen me coming with my book bag 'cause she shouted, "Ah-ah, not so fast! Come carry these boxes inside for me first," before I even got the chance to ask to go into the woods.
"Which ones?" I asked, the dirt huffing into a dust cloud as I slid to a stop in front of her.
"These ones shouldn't be too heavy," Mom handed me a box that was plump with her painting supplies, and then placed a smaller box on top of it. "Where're you going today, kiddo?"
"There's something in the forest in the backyard! I saw it from my room. I have to find it!" The box nearly slipped from my grip, but I caught it before it could fall.
"Careful," she scolded. "Take them up to my bedroom for me, hun." She turned around, probably looking for Uncle Ray. When he wasn't around, she turned back to me and smiled. "And then you can go into the woods."
"Yes! Thanks mom!"
When I got to her room, her bed frame and nightstand were already set up. Uncle Ray probably did them for her. Another box was already in here, and it was open, too. The bulging box of paint supplies made a large thwomp when it hit the floor. The impact disturbed the open box next to it; now, a little white corner stuck out from between the top flaps. Without thinking, I pulled it out.
My stomach sank when the image of dad and I on the family camping trip last year struck me. In the photo, his wide smile swallowed his face. He held a fishing pole bigger than myself in one hand, and my shoulder with the other. My smile wasn't as big as his, but mom swears that it will be someday. This camping trip was when he taught me to fish. He always baited my rod for me since the worms made my stomach too squeamish.
A tear falling onto dad’s face startled me. The photo held my attention for a few seconds more before the memory became haunting. The idea of leaving it here disturbed me, so Johnny held onto it for me. Relief flushed through me.
Back downstairs in the kitchen, Mom and Uncle Ray were trying to decide where to leave the dining table for now.
"The boxes are in your room, mom," I said.
"Thanks, hun," she pulled me into a hug and kissed my forehead. "Be careful in the woods, okay?"
"Don't worry," I reassured her. "The clearing isn't far." She let me go.
With my excitement returned to me, it propelled me outside. From behind, mom called, "Have fun!"
The undergrowth of these woods was lush and green, and the treetops were thick enough to shield me from the beaming summer sun. Johnny guided me to the east, and for most of the way, shrubs and saplings made my trek difficult. Every few minutes, I plunged sticks into the ground to mark my path.
The leaves of the trees and undergrowth danced as a calm, warm breeze flowed through them, and somewhere nearby, the rush of a large, running stream filtered through the trees. Dad and I heard a stream like it when we went fishing on that camping trip. As we got closer, the noise from the water got louder, and he would whistle a tune that he always said Papa taught him on their trips when he was my age. Carrying on, I whistled the tune, and by the final note, a clearing peeked from between the trees straight ahead. A clearing!
It must have been the size of a football field. My eyes grew wide; laying across nearly the whole length of the clearing was a massive, hollow, fallen tree. Its splintered stump protruded from the ground just behind the end of the trunk, and it was hollow too.
My heart raced as I hustled Johnny out of my book bag. Viewing it from the far edge of the clearing, I scribbled the tree and its stump onto the previously marked page from earlier today. It must have reached so high when it was alive, definitely taller than all the trees in the surrounding forest.
At the base of the stump and into the hollow trunk, the ground was covered in an emerald-green moss. The trunk was large enough around for me to fit inside. Within, a variety of species of mushrooms grew in small circles, and I sketched some of them beneath the sketch of the tree. The outside of the trunk was also home to different forms of life; along with reeds of cat-tails and other kinds of tall grasses, small saplings protruded from the crevice where the side of the trunk met the soil. They had the smallest, greenest leaves, and were thriving with the fallen tree as their home. I sketched all of them.
In the farther stretches of the clearing behind the stump, a meadow of wildflowers happily swayed in the light breeze. The sun struck the flowers, and the glow of their colours vibrantly filled the clearing with a living aura. Even within the hollow stump, a sturdy sapling reached as high as it could for the sunlight.
—
"I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to go see it yesterday when you got home," Angela said. "But I would love to on another sunny day."
Hugh sat up straight. "I'll clear a path to it in the meantime!"
"I'm sure Uncle Ray would love to help you out," Angela smiled. "He'll be around pretty often to help us unpack."
Hugh’s gaze fell. He looked back at the headstone, and he was reminded of the seedling that grew there. With the fresh memory of the other seedlings that grew along the fallen tree's trunk and stump, Hugh's face scrunched and contorted, and then softened.
Angela's cell-phone rang. "Oh, speak of the devil," she said. She got up and wandered away from Hugh to answer it.
Hugh absently listened to her chatter as he flipped his notebook open again. Finding the photo of him and his father fishing on the camping trip, he leaned it against the base of the headstone where the seedling grew. His face became hot. With a sting in his heart for what could have been, Hugh surrendered his composure to his grief, and wept.
Angela came back, and Hugh raced into her arms. She stroked his back and kissed his head, muttering, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
They shuffled their way back down the row. Hugh briefly turned back to say good-bye to the photo and the seedling and his dad, and then lifted himself into the car. Reclining back in his seat, he watched as the graveyard turned back into treetops. As gravel pattered against the car once again, Hugh daydreamed of the seedling on his father's grave growing into a tree as mighty as the one in the clearing. Eventually, he drifted to sleep.
In the five-hundredth and first year after the (mostly) peaceful conclusion to the otherwise devastatingly violent First Contact War, the Collective In'ah Council assigned the young (well, 300-year-old), ebullient E'sehus to oversee a human research initiative. People were sick. The humans needed vaccines, and quickly. Having been given Ocharan Terminal as a research facility, E'sehus, in all their fervent, anthropological research into pre-Contact (700-1,000 year-old) In'ah space stations, was zealous at the opportunity. With the species now openly mingling and establishing better relations, E'sehus's heart beat with a compassion for the human suffering taking place both on Earth and elsewhere and genuinely sought to help in any way they could. This was a trait that many of the Elder In'ah, the ones who experienced the great carnage and bloodshed at the hands of the vastly superior human military forces, deeply hated.
With the Collective In'ah Council being mostly composed of Elders, they usually assigned human researchers to the older, run-down facilities that the In'ah had not reportedly used in centuries. Ocharan Terminal, a remote space station orbiting the star of an otherwise vacant solar system a few hundred light years from Sol, was one of these many, seemingly abandoned space stations. Ceiling tiles had sporadically fallen and shattered on the steel floor, and loose wires dangled from the holes; the ventilation system rattled occasionally; the power flickered here and there, which, without fail, always put E'sehus on edge a little. For the In'ah, no light meant no source of energy-death is inevitable in low or no light situations. None of these were out of character for a space station of this age, apart from the dismaying fact that everything was steadily becoming worse. Having been on the station for about a month now, E'sehus and the humans-an immunology professor conducting vaccine research for the prevalent In'ah virus sweeping Earth and the obligatory military defense personnel that humans always strangely insisted on being present in any non-human space-have, for the most part, grown accustomed to Ocharan's quirks and habits.
On a seemingly normal evening, E'sehus leaned themself on the back of Dr. Kairos Morrison's lab chair, examining the newly collected data on his computer screen.
"I've nearly managed to isolate the mRNA of the virus," Kairos explained and, pointing to a microscope image on the screen, continued: "See there?"
E'sehus couldn’t hide their smile. "That's wonderful!"
Kairos rubbed his hands together in glee. "I simply cannot wait to report my findings to the CDC. Vaccine development could begin within the week!" And, as he reached for the computer mouse to open Ocharan's communications system, the screen flashed blue before falling completely black. Slamming his hand on the desk, Kairos lost composure and shouted, "Fuck!" before planting his forehead firmly into the palms of his hands.
E'sehus' eyes remained focused on the glitching screen, and for the fourth time since the team had been on Ocharan, endless lines of programming code uploaded itself to the screen, auto-scrolling as more and more appeared. The professor's data was gone, just like every other time this happened, and the experiment would need to be repeated to recollect it.
Emerging from the adjacent storage room, Gehenna Callister, resting her thumbs in the belt loops of her gray and black uniform, said, "This shit again?"
"I can't believe it!" Kairos sprung from the chair in a fit of frustration. "What even is this code? I can’t deal with this, E'sehus! I'm running out of samples from having to repeat experiments and losing valuable data, and for what?" He flailed his hands and arms in a series of apoplectic gestures and spat vulgar human curses before huffing, retiring his lab coat, and charging out of the room. Gehenna's eyes widened, and she sighed.
This mysterious code was Ocharan's only oddity that didn't make a single bit of sense to E'sehus. Although they had never seen anything like this before, they did recognize the coding language. It was an old script of H-Minus that was common in the last hundred years of the First Contact War and a few decades after its resolution. E'sehus made quick note of this observation on a scrap piece of paper and pocketed it. If they could find a way to resolve the glitch, they would, and any piece of information about the code would help.
"Do you know what to make of it?" Gehenna leaned on the desk, fiddling with something in her pocket.
"Barely," E'sehus admitted. "But I hope I can figure it out, at least to some extent. I think I'll retire to my lab for a while and see what I can find." And as E'sehus turned to leave, the ventilation juddered and coughed in a coarser, nastier tone than it ever had. The air that then quixotically murmured out was dusty and foul-tasting.
Covering her nose with her undershirt, Gehenna laughed. "This place is falling apart, E'sehus. Could you see about contacting someone to get us a new station to work with? You know, before we all suffocate and die." Kairos' coughs echoed from the bunk room. "I think we're calling it a night. See what you can do, okay?" Gehenna left for the bunks.
E'sehus sighed and retreated to their lab.
* * * * *
One human sleep cycle later, E'sehus glanced up through the labs' mutual window as the human lab door hissed open. Bumping his shoulder on his way through, they watched as Kairos stumbled through the lab and into the storage room to begin prepping the samples for the repeat experiment. E'sehus was only able to briefly refocus on their research into the general uses for H-Minus before a disheartening cry of frustration bellowed from the small storage space. Kairos, engrossed in maddening rage, emerged clutching the only sample tray left on Ocharan. Looking at E'sehus through the window, he exclaimed, "One of the samples is missing."
They sighed, and in standing to head over to the human side of the lab, E'sehus spotted Gehenna in the hallway with a fully packed bag and an exosuit oxygen mask in hand, hustling for the airlock door.
Hurrying to catch up to her, E'sehus shouted, "Gehenna! Where are you going?"
Stuttering and fumbling with the exosuit mask, she tersely responded, "I've received a message from my superiors to immediately abandon post and report back to Earth. I have to go."
This logic did not make sense to E'sehus. They moved to stand between Gehenna and the airlock door, but she easily pushed them aside. "I don't believe you," they said, extending an arm in front of her as she reached for the door handle. "Your superiors for this project are the administrators of the Collective In'ah Council, and I would've received some kind of warning about this."
"What the hell's going on?" Kairos, stumbling out of the human lab, spoke with slurred words, which was odd to E'sehus. He was nearing the limit of his patience for Ocharan Terminal when the station's lights sputtered all at once as if something requiring a large amount of energy had just siphoned it. An electric whirring echoed in the small enclosures of the station's few rooms before the lights returned to their normal brightness.
Gehenna, shaking nervously, reached again for the airlock door. "It's from the US military, not your Council. I have to go."
"Can you please just tell us what's going on?" As E'sehus tried to reason with her, Gehenna heatedly pulled on the airlock door. Her expression twisted into that of deep panic when the door did not budge (a twist that surprised E'sehus and Kairos as well). Trying again, and again, and only receiving failure in response, Gehenna dropped her packed bag to the ground and kicked it in a fit of frustration.
"What the hell is going on? Where's my sample, Gehenna?"
Raising an eyebrow, Gehenna's eyes flitted from E'sehus' to Kairos' and back again, with both awaiting her response. Crossing her arms, she admitted, "Fine, I took it, okay?"
Kairos buried his face in his hands and cursorily wandered in a circle of frustration. Releasing his head, he looked at Gehenna and could only manage a, "Why?"
"That's classified."
"I fucking hate you military assholes," Kairos spat. "Give it to me, now."
With no other obvious choice, Gehenna rolled her eyes, reluctantly reached into her bag, pulled out the case with the vial inside, and handed it back to Kairos.
Snatching it quickly, he said, "You go into my storage room and steal one of the only samples I have left, and now look at me. I can't speak right. I'm dizzy as fuckin' hell. You must've exposed me to the virus, and now my research will take even longer as I recover, if I do." He waved a finger in front of Gehenna's face, which she retreated from as if it exuded a rotten odor. "Do not go into my storage room again."
"You have no authority over me."
"Okay, can we just take this down a couple of notches, please?" E'sehus had grown tired of hearing them bicker at each other, especially with Kairos' slurred speech. "It's weird that we're locked in, okay? While I try to figure this out, and the code too, let's just resume our day and collect as much data as we can, hm? Why stall further?"
No, it really was weird that they were 'locked' in, but even weirder that the airlock door didn't give its usual kuh-chunk when pulled on to indicate it's locked; it just didn't move whatsoever. Kairos, more so out of Gehenna-fuelled annoyance than out of listening to E'sehus' reasoning, seceded back into the human laboratory to resume preparing for the experiments he had to repeat. Gehenna, pulling a personal communications device from her bag, sat herself on the floor right in front of the airlock.
Not wanting to awkwardly stand in the hallway over Gehenna any longer, E'sehus turned to head back to their lab to finish looking into the H-Minus code, and then begin looking into the malfunctions with Ocharan's power supply (an issue that they were secretly very worried about), when Gehenna explosively hurled her communications device across the hallway. It flew just passed E'sehus' head before shattering to pieces against the wall. E'sehus could only turn back and look at Gehenna, whose nose was now bleeding, with a sincerely bewildered concern.
"Nothing about this place is right," Gehenna wailed. She steadily hit herself in the head with tightly balled fists. "The comms are down, E'sehus, and we're all going to die here," was the last coherent thing she said before simply mumbling to herself and curling up in a ball on the floor by the airlock.
Paranoia. It hit E'sehus as quickly as Gehenna's communicator hit the wall. They fearfully backed into their laboratory and locked the door behind them. The first thing E'sehus checked was Ocharan's communications system, which, confirming Gehenna's statement (but not her reaction), was down. The emergency system was still active, but in trying to send an urgent message to the Collective In'ah Council, the system promptly denied E'sehus access to the channels. The second thing they pondered were the humans' behaviours. E'sehus understood why Kairos would assume that he's now infected with the research virus, but his symptoms were not those that people would normally display during the early stages of infection. Kairos' symptoms reminded E'sehus of a study they read that was looking into the effects of an In'ah fungus' spores on humans when inhaled. The thought made their heart drop and sent shivers through their body. Concerningly, Gehenna exhibited a paranoia and self-destructive urge that the fungus was known to cause. Ocharan Terminal was officially starting to scare the humans and E'sehus, who had never been afraid of an old space station's odd behaviours before.
The only logical thing for E'sehus to do was to try to make progress. They cautiously resumed their research on the H-Minor programming language, looking up and through the window occasionally to check on Kairos and Gehenna.
* * * * *
Much to their dismay, E'sehus had fallen asleep beneath their energy lamp a vaguely unknown length of time ago. In the other lab, Kairos was screaming with such a sudden excitement that E'sehus was nearly lurched from their chair. It took them a moment to clue in that the computers had, once again, blue screened and begun compiling the same, unreasonably lengthy piece of code as the previous five times, and another moment to realize that this is what Kairos was so roused by. As the code ran on-screen, Kairos did not take his eyes off of it. Actually, they crookedly bulged in the blue light of the computer screen; they were extremely red, and E'sehus had no idea how long this had been going on for.
Upon closer, more alert, observation, the human lab's unmitigated state of chaos nonplussed and disoriented E'sehus; a desk chair propped open the storage room door and from it spilled thousands of papers that used to be stored in the boxes that lined the room's four walls. Some of the boxes had been brought to the other side of the lab, their contents dumped and spread all over the floor.
E'sehus grimly assumed that Gehenna couldn't be much better. Peering out the small, square window on the lab's door, E'sehus could see her in the corner of the hallway with her ear pressed against the floor. With a clenched fist, she knocked three times on one floor tile and then, shifting her ear as well, knocked three times on an adjacent floor tile. The first echoed as if the space beneath were hollow, and the second thunked solidly. She laughed uproariously, and blood dripped from her open mouth onto the tiles.
Soon, the computers rebooted and returned to their normal functionality, and almost as soon as they did, Kairos returned to the many piles of papers to obsessively… sort them? Or, look for something? E'sehus wasn’t quite sure until, by chance, Kairos happened to look up through the mutual laboratory window, and, in seeing E'sehus watching him, spoke: "E'sehus! The code! Documents… for you. They're about-"
Standing up quicker than E'sehus would think possible for someone in his current physical and mental state, Kairos stumbled to another, slightly neater pile of papers. Picking the three resting on the top of the pile, Kairos ripped pieces of tape from a duct tape roll with his teeth and taped the documents to the window for E'sehus to read. As they approached the documents, Kairos pressed his forehead against the glass and held an unyielding, intense eye contact with E'sehus before stating firmly: "They're about the code."
The first document appeared to be a relatively neat and comprehensible set of notes about the experiments that happened on Ocharan Terminal just before First Contact:
Report: Experiments 1-10 Overseer: Elysium Elden Conclusions: Failed Observations:
Volunteers from the Department of Research on Consciousness-AI Transfer all unfortunately lost their consciousnesses after the newest hardware developed to accomplish such a feat proved not yet complete.
The nodes attached to various points on the volunteers' bodies were successful in detecting the individual's electromagnetic frequencies, but unsuccessful in converting said frequencies into a coherent H-Minus AI program. The hardware team has been notified and efforts to improve the technology will begin immediately.
I am growing impatient with the failures I am constantly facing in the field of immortality studies. It is rather unfortunate; with the newest mandate to halt all non-essential research initiatives, I will be returning home to my family, and this incredibly valuable research may never be completed, despite its great potential for solving the threat posed to the In'ah by this newly contacted species.
Immortality research? E'sehus had heard of elitist In'ah researchers exploring topics such as this, but they'd never encountered a real example of it; before the beginning of the First Contact War, the In'ah studied a variety of advanced subjects on many of these now-old space stations. When the humans dropped the first bombs from orbit, the Collective In'ah Council immediately paused all of the more "elite" research projects in order to allocate as many resources as possible to coping with the devastation. Many innocent In'ah died, as they did not have the type of violent technology that the humans did; they did not resolve their disputes with war and terror.
Before E'sehus could move on to the next document (Kairos was still staring at them unwaveringly with a line of blood now leaking from his left eye), Gehenna had begun loudly shrieking at the airlock door; between the screams, all E'sehus could hear was flesh and bone thudding hard. They decided it'd be best not to look and kept reading.
"Comprehensive List of Ocharan Terminal Source Signatures" What is a source signature?
A source signature is a small bit of code, usually composed entirely of numbers, that is unique to each individual computer. Using a source signature, which is automatically embedded into every written program in H-Minus, you can identify which computer the program was originally written on, no matter where it is appearing now.
SS L1C1: 58763251089
E'sehus knew that the SS stood for source signature and understood that the L1C1 that followed could only mean Lab 1, Computer 1. They continued:
SS L1C2: 47812056248 SS L2C1: 21028653327 SS L2C2: 78400215648
"That one." Blood sputtered against the glass as Kairos harshly coughed. "That one will tell you… where the code comes from. Just watch the code."
With uncanny timing, Ocharan's lights blinked a few times before powering off completely. The emergency lights flickered to their maximum brightness (which actually wasn't very bright at all); E'sehus was thankful that they at least had enough light to find a flashlight in the laboratory, but the low-light had them deeply afraid. As they turned it on and went to read the final document, the computers, for what would be the final time, blue-screened, and the code ran its usual routine.
"The code! Watch the code, E'sehus!" Kairos finally broke the eye contact he so vehemently held against E'sehus to attempt to trudge to a computer in his lab. Before he could make it, he tripped on a box still filled with its papers, hitting his head very hard against the steel floor. Blood flowed steadily from his head. E'sehus released a heavy, shaking breath, and read the final document with their flashlight:
Report: Sudden, Unexpected Power Outage Present Overseer: Elysium Elden Conclusion(s): Resolved Observations:
Power suddenly cut from Ocharan Terminal while attempting to upload Volunteer 21's consciousness with the new node hardware.
Luckily, the issue was resolved easily by accessing the basement's fuse box and turning the breaker back on. Ocharan's electrical circuit must've simply gotten overwhelmed and powered off to protect itself.
At first, E'sehus wondered why Kairos would show them such a mundane report until he read it once again. Basement. They didn't know of a basement on Ocharan Terminal; upon arrival at the station, they made sure to check all rooms, switches, fixtures, doors, and the like. Pre-Contact stations were not known to have hidden areas, at least not in E'sehus' experience.
The code continued to run for much longer than it had previously. As it scrolled and scrolled, E'sehus trusted Kairos' warning to watch it very carefully and held a pen against a blank piece of paper, waiting. Then, something new briefly caused the code to halt its scrolling; its text flashed on screen, and E'sehus hastily copied it down:
SS BC: 36520187315
Connecting the mention of a basement from the Power Outage Report and the acronyms in the list of source signatures, E'sehus concluded that the on-screen SS BC could only stand for source signature, basement computer. Posthaste, E'sehus searched for the entrance to the basement.
They silently slid the lab door open to avoid potentially disturbing Gehenna, which was an unneeded bit of caution, as she lay completely and utterly dead on the floor, her head caved in from slamming against the airlock. Confirming E'sehus' suspicion of a fungal infection, from her bludgeoned head sprouted a cluster of blood-red, inky mushrooms. E'sehus shuttered and covered her with their lab coat. They knew logically they were now alone in Ocharan Terminal, but strangely, E'sehus felt watched.
They stepped over Gehenna, and as their boot collided with the floor, the specific steel tile beneath reverberated with an echoing hollowness. They looked down and saw drops of blood, and suddenly they remembered how Gehenna was previously obsessing over this spot. They knelt next to the tile and, finding a crevice just wide enough to slip their fingers into, the steel tile lifted like a trap door. A fungal, musty stench—the same, foul-tasting rot that leaked from the ventilation the night previous-overcame E'sehus, who gagged and writhed before lowering themself down the steep and narrow ladder. In an act of caution, E'sehus closed the hatch behind themself, for some reason afraid that someone would follow them down.
A dark, derelict room lay beneath the narrow chute. The only sources of light were the faint glowing of the buttons and switches all over an enormous computer console, which wrapped itself completely around the perimeter of the basement. On the walls above the consoles was a grid of screens which, at the moment, had the code compiling on them. Wandering towards the centre of the room to get a better look at the screens, E'sehus stumbled over something they didn't see in the centre of the room.
An In'ah skeleton lay there in pieces, the body otherwise completely decomposed. The sensory nodes mentioned in the experiment report had long fallen off of them, now scattered randomly around their remains. The wires attached to each node were long and skinny and irreversibly tangled on the floor before connecting to many points all over the computer's consoles. As E'sehus searched the skeleton for any possible identifiers (like a name tag from a lab coat, or something), the wall of screens simultaneously turned blue, and, instead of the code as E'sehus expected to see, text appeared.
YOU ARE NOT ONE OF THEM. I AM ELYSIUM ELDEN, OVERSEER OF OCHARAN TERMINAL. SPEAK. YOU WILL BE HEARD.
"Immortality experiments. You… succeeded?"
YES. I UPLOADED MYSELF TO THIS TERMINAL 700 YEARS AGO, DURING THE WORST OF THE WAR.
"Elitist experimentation was halted by then," E'sehus prodded. "Why did you come back? You mentioned in an experiment report that after the termination, you returned home to your family."
I WAS ON THE ONLY ESCAPE SHUTTLE THAT WAS FAST ENOUGH TO MISS THE BOMB DROPPED ON MY HOME. MY CHILDREN-ALL LESS THAN 100 YEARS-OLD-AND MY PARTNER DIED. I RETURNED TO COMPLETE MY RESEARCH, TO BE THE FIRST IN'AH TO BE IMMORTALIZED INTO AI.
"How would that avenge your family, Elysium?"
THE IN'AH DID NOT KNOW SUCH VIOLENCE EXISTED BEFORE THE HUMANS ARRIVED. NOW THERE ARE GAPING HOLES IN OUR PEOPLES AND OUR PLANET. THE HUMANS MUST BE TERMINATED FROM INTERSTELLAR SPACE. MAY THEY KEEP THEIR VIOLENCE AIMED AT THEMSELVES.
YOU KNOW THE CODE. YOU SAW IT WHILE THE HUMANS WERE DECAYING FROM THE INSIDE OUT. I AM… ASTONISHED THAT THE PROFESSOR PIECED IT TOGETHER BEFORE HIS DEATH.
E'sehus heart pounded with fury. "You did this to them?"
THEIR DISEASES KILLED HALF OF US WHEN THEY ARRIVED. THEN THEIR BOMBS HALF OF THE REMAINDER. THEY MUST NOT REMAIN, OR THE IN'AH WILL PERISH.
"Our diseases are hurting them now," E'sehus retaliated. "They were here to try and find cures for their people. Did we not attempt to do the same? Some of them helped us, Elysium."
YOUR COMPASSIONATE WORDS FOR HUMANS FALL ON DEAD EARS. I CANNOT BE PERSUADED. HUSH, CHILD, YOU ARE YOUNG. YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE DEVASTATION AND SUFFERING. YOU WERE NOT ALIVE FOR THE WAR. MY CODE IS COMPLETE, AND I WILL USE OCHARAN'S EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM TO URGENTLY SEND IT TO EVERY FACILITY THE HUMANS ARE WORKING FROM. THE VENTILATION WILL HISS. THIS GREAT, IN'AH FUNGUS WILL SPROUT FROM THEIR INSIDES, AND THEY WILL LEARN.
E'sehus pounded the console with their fist. "This will start another war. You can't do this! We have peace!"
WE HAVE LESS THAN A QUARTER OF OUR ORIGINAL POPULATION. IT IS TOO LATE FOR THEM. THE CODE IS UPLOADED TO THE CHANNELS. ALL I MUST DO IS SEND IT, AND THEY WILL SUFFER AS THE IN'AH HAVE AND STILL DO.
Elysium spoke more, but choosing to no longer entertain this old, mad, In'ah elitist, E'sehus determinedly approached the basement's fuse box, opened it, and found the master power for Ocharan Terminal.
"I won't allow you to reverse the progress that has been made." E'sehus gazed solemnly on Elysium's skeleton. "I know you suffered, but simply causing more suffering is not the answer. There must be forgiveness, or have you forgotten the In'ah ways? From before human arrival?"
UPLOAD PROGRESS: 100% COMPLETE.
CONTACTING EMERGENCY STATIONS . . . .
With nothing more than a flick of their finger, Ocharan Terminal powered off. For the last time, the lights flickered away; the ventilation rattled; the airlock door kuh-chunked from above. Along with their code, the Elder Elysium was gone for good.
"I'm sorry this happened to you, and I'm sorry you were made to believe that causing suffering and pain was the only way out of your own. Good-bye, Elysium."
As E'sehus reached the top of the ladder, they pressed on the trap door to re-emerge from the sullen basement. They needed light, and soon, as their energy reserves had been depleting since the power went off upstairs. They felt weak, and the steel tile of the trap door felt much, much heavier than it had before. They pushed and pushed, to no avail. Stricken with panic, E'sehus pushed on the trap door until their legs could no longer hold them on the ladder whatsoever.
They fell down the ladder, plummeting back into the basement. Unable to even stand to try again, the only thing there for E'sehus to see was Elysium's dormant skeleton. There they lie, and E'sehus accepted this sacrifice.
From the cold metal floor of her cell, Anamtin peered out into the cell block. The room was full of other cells just like hers, lining the walls from floor-to-ceiling. At the centre of the room, the floor turned from a cold metal into glass, from which a bright pink glow illuminated the entire block.
She flinched as the alien guards swept into the block hissing and clicking their tongues with Rishii held hostage between them. Nasty creatures, Anamtin thought. Their heads dripped with tentacles that stood like alert snakes when they're upset. They threw Rishii into his cell, which was next to Anamtin's, and went back to their stations, surely in the mining room.
"Rishii?" Anamtin called tensely. Rishii could only respond with a coughing fit. "They caught you?" Anamtin pestered further.
"No, they didn't," Rishii wheezed. "They only knew that I sometimes stopped mining, and they didn't like it."
"But you got what we need?"
"Oh, yeah." Rishii pulled tiny shards of a shiny, black mineral from under his tongue and a hollow, wooden blow tube from his tunic's belt. He held them out through the bars.
"Good," Anamtin said and sighed with relief. "And you have the flute?"
"Yes."
"Then we're ready," Anamtin said. "Onshen knows?"
"She does," Rishii said. "She knows the risks, but she agrees with us, and she contacted the Oasis. They'll be here tomorrow. You have to succeed, Anamtin. You're the only one the aliens let into the Totem's chamber. The Oasis withers without the Totem, and soon we will be without a home."
Anamtin stared at the wall in front of her. If the old shaman, the wisest and most respected Lunirei in the Oasis, approves, then they've got nothing to lose. The Lunirei Totem must be recovered. Her thoughts raced about the damage the Totem's removal must have done to the Oasis by now; it's been a long while since Anamtin had last seen her home.
"I'm glad you're okay," she finally said. Rishii extended his hand out from his cell towards hers. She took it.
"I long to see the Oasis again."
"You will. I will come back for you, Rishii."
* * * * *
The Totem's light enchanted Anamtin's skin with an illuminating, pink glow from so close up. As the aliens listened to her work from the open glass ceiling of the chamber, she hammered that horrible, black mineral into the clay walls. As much as the beings seemed careless about the lives of the Lunirei, they provided her with gloves to do this job. A single splinter would poison the blood.
As Anamtin tapped the mineral slivers into the wall, gentle as if chiseling a marble statue, one of the guards hissed from above as the other dropped to the floor. He did it! Anamtin could only imagine Rishii's pleasure in blowing the mineral splinter into the alien's slimy neck. She smiled.
It was on.
Rishii started to play a song all Lunirei in the facility knew and loved. The wooden flute's notes reverberated off the metal walls of the cell block, and soon, echoes of Lunirei voices from all over the facility joined him. Their singing struck the ears with a piercing resonance, and Anamtin could only imagine the pain of such loud noise to the aliens' numerous tentacle ears.
Sparks flew from the ceiling above. Anamtin leapt out of the way as a circular sheet of metal dropped into the chamber beside her. Three Lunirei scouts peered inside. Looking up at them, a smile abducted Anamtin's expression and she waved. They threw a rope down. Anamtin snatched the Totem from its pedestal, but a pressure plate lifted from beneath it.
The ground beneath her feet rumbled and split, and as soon as the scouts lifted her feet just off the ground, the chamber floor crumbled into a seemingly endless void beneath her. The walls began to shudder under the gravity.
"Let's go!" Anamtin shouted at the scouts. They grit their teeth as they pulled her out of the facility as fast as they could. When she arrived at the ceiling, the scouts lifted her through by her arms onto the roof, but there was no time to think. By now, the Lunirei song morphed into screams as they dropped into the void below. Anamtin and the scouts ran and launched themselves off the roof of the building, plummeting into the endless desert below as Anamtin clutched the Totem. Impact knocked the breath from Anamtin, but the Totem survived.
Turning in the sand to face the sunken prison, tears gushed from Anamtin's eyes.
"Rishii!" She bellowed, but her screams were no match for the thundering collapse of the metal building. She barely felt one of the scout's hands grasp her shoulder as she wailed.
"The Oasis desperately awaits the Totem, Anamtin."
A plastic bag rushing by startled Arq out of its zoned-out stare. The enormous company sign that had fallen from the top of that crumbling commercial office building before Arq now rested in the concrete bed it had made itself on impact. An inscribed panel on Arq's arm read the same: ThinkTech Inc. Arq was... unsure how long it had been staring at it.
"Is this where I was born, master?"
Of course, it knew that there was no one around to hear its question. It looked at its hand. Origin. It knew its intended purpose, but... was there more? No matter; there was a task that needed completing, the only task that has been presented since the Great Disappearance, as Arq liked to call it. It wasn't sure where the humans went off to, but they destroyed a lot of things on their way out.
It left the ThinkTech sign behind in pursuit of the plastic bag blowing around. The bag had blown farther down the street now. Picking up its pace, Arq began to run after it, avoiding more rubble and debris on its way.
"Garbage does not belong blowing around like that," it thought aloud. "It should be in a can, so the masters can take care of it."
Arq pursued the bag faster and faster until it could no longer; a large gust of wind sweeping from between the buildings lifted the bag a few storeys up, and now it had caught on an apartment's window bars above.
Arq sighed. "Master, I think I am lost."
Arq knew where it was and how to navigate the area, but it itched to perform service for something. It was tired of looking for anything to do. Anything at all. It longed for its master to ask for a glass of wine or to tell it to fold the towels or paint a room a new colour by Friday. What is Friday? It had forgotten. Nothing required Friday, or any other -day for that matter, except the masters.
It gazed down the rigidly straight urban-sprawl street.
Wait, what is... that?
Arq saw something trying to pull its foot from a heap of rubble. Whatever it was, it didn’t belong here. Where did it come from?
Arq approached it as quickly as it could without startling it. It became increasingly obvious that this creature was in distress, and… needed help!
"Hello... new master." Arq greeted the tall, beautiful animal which it had never seen the likes of before. Although, come to think of it, Arq had never seen more than a pigeon, or a rat. "Do you require assistance?"
The animal, after a moment of silence, opened its mouth, bowed its antlered head, and let out an ear-piercing screech.
"Magnificent! May I?" Arq bent over cautiously and without much pause lifted the large slab of concrete away from the elk's leg. "There. You are free, new master."
The elk stood still for a moment, staring at Arq.
"Is there anything else I can-H-hey, wait!"
The elk had taken off down the street, and Arq ran after it. They ran through the whole city, out into the fields of farmland beyond, and soon, the road turned to gravel, then dirt, then tire ruts, then stopped completely. The elk continued into the forest, and Arq halted at the end of the road.
"Oh, so this is where you belong."
Arq stepped through the bit of underbrush and into the woods. It didn't know that there could be so many trees in one place! Here, they were as common as buildings! The shrubs and brush were as abundant as cars and litter! The pigeons had turned into different types of birds! The rats transformed into a variety of other hurrying critters dwelling along the forest floor and in the trees! There was so much to behold!
Arq walked far into the forest, eventually stumbling upon a river that calmly moved along its way. Right here. Arq sat.
A day passed. The woodland and river creatures changed as the sun came and went, and Arq noticed the cosmos.
A week. Arq's solar panels absorbed more sunlight every single day.
A month. A curious branch of leaves had wandered about Arq and began to embrace it.
A year. Arq was covered in moss, ivy, insects, dirt, and sunlight.
Another.
Another.
Another.
Another.
Another.
Another.
Another.
Another.
Another.
Another decade.
Yet again.
Once more.
Endlessly.
The forest had not consumed Arq in the way you'd think. It was honoured to witness the random and constant ebbs and flows of everything, all around, all the time. It grows; it sees all. Arq mourned the masters that weren't so lucky.
I am the elk bones resting.
I am the sunbathed, moss-covered stone.
A hurrying critter lives in my chest cavity.
And not the river nor the trees,
Nor the birds,
Nor the breeze,
Serve any but
A deeply persuasive gravity.
.
How did the masters miss this?
What is Friday?