In the five-hundreth and first year after the First Contact War's resolution, the Collective In'ah Council assigned the young, well, 300-year-old, ebullient E'sehus to oversee a human research initiative. People were sick, and the humans needed vaccines, quickly. The Council gave E'sehus and their human research team Ocharan Terminal to conduct their research in. E'sehus, in all their fervent, anthropological research into pre-Contact In'ah space stations, was zealous at the opportunity to see one with their own eyes. With humans and In'ah now mingling and establishing good relationships, E'sehus' heart beat with compassion for the human suffering taking place on Earth and elsewhere. They sought to help in any way they could. The Elder In'ah, the ones who experienced carnage and bloodshed at the hands of Earth's military forces, hated E'sehus' attitude.

The Council, by nature, was mostly Elders. They usually assigned human researchers to the older, run-down facilities that hadn't been used in centuries. Ocharan Terminal, a remote space station orbiting the star of an otherwise vacant solar system, was a few hundred light-years from Sol and was one of the many abandoned In'ah space stations. Ceiling tiles had sporadically fallen and shattered on the steel floor, and loose wires dangled from the holes. The ventilation system rattled, and the power flickered here and there, which, without fail, put E'sehus on edge. For the In'ah, no light meant no energy source. Death became inevitable in low- or no-light situations. None of these features were out of character for a space station of this age, except for one thing: they began happening more frequently. E'sehus had never heard of an old space station deteriorating so quickly. Having been on the station for about a month, E'sehus and the human, an immunology professor conducting the vaccine research for the In'ah virus sweeping Earth, and the obligatory military defense personnel that humans always insisted on being present in any non-human space, have, for the most part, grown accustomed to Ocharan Terminal's quirks and habits.

During a regular evening for the station's three inhabitants, E'sehus leaned on the back of Dr. Kairos Morrison's lab chair, examining the data collected on his computer screen.

"I'm so close to isolating the mRNA of the virus," Kairos explained. He pointed to an image of a microscope slide on the screen. "See there?"

E'sehus smiled. "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!" As Kairos opened Ocharan Terminal's communications program to begin his report, the screen flashed blue and then was black. Kairos slammed his hand on the desk, lost his composure and shouted, "Fuck!" before planting his forehead in the palms of his hands.

E'sehus remained focused on the glitching screen. For the fourth time since the team arrived on Ocharan, endless lines of code uploaded itself to the screen and auto-scrolled as more and more appeared. The professor's data was gone, just like the other three times the system crashed, and the experiment would need to be repeated to recollect it.

Gehenna Callister emerged from the lab's storage room, thumbs hooked in the belt loops of her gray and black camo pants and said, "This shit again?"

"I can't believe it!" Kairos sprung from his 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 I'm losing valuable primary 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 lab. Gehenna's eyes widened, and she sighed.

The mysterious code was an oddity that didn't make a bit of sense to E'sehus. They had never seen a space station's computers bluescreen and spit code. But, E'sehus recognized the coding language. It was an old script of H-Minus that was in common use during the last hundred years of the First Contact War. It fell into obsolescence a few decades after the war's resolution. E'sehus noted 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 can figure it out. I'm retiring to my lab for a while, and I'll see what I can find." And as E'sehus turned to leave, the ventilation juddered and coughed. It was coarse and nasty, like the station itself had a smoking problem. Dusty and foul-tasting air murmured from the vent.

Gehenna laughed as she lifted her shirt to cover her nose. "This place is falling apart, E'sehus. Can't you contact someone to get us a new station to work in? You know, before we all suffocate and die." Kairos' coughing echoed from the bunk room. Gehenna looked at E'sehus, raising an eyebrow, and then left for the bunks.

E'sehus sighed and retreated to their lab.

********

One human sleep cycle later, E'sehus looked up through the labs' mutual window as the human-side lab door hissed open. Kairos stumbled in, bumping his shoulder on his way through. He made his way into the lab's storage room and began prepping the samples for the repeat experiment. E'sehus refocused on their research on the general uses of 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. He caught E'sehus watching through the window and exclaimed, "One of my samples are missing!"

E'sehus sighed and put their monitor to sleep. As they went to the human-side 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. "Gehenna! Where are you going?"

She tersely responded, "I've received a message from my superiors to immediately report back to Earth. I'm leaving."

The logic didn't sit well with E'sehus. They moved to stand between Gehenna and the airlock door, but she was much stronger than them and pushed them aside.

"I don't believe you," E'sehus said. They shoved an arm in front of her as she reached for the airlock. "Your superiors for this project are the administrators of the Collective In'ah Council, and I would have received a message."

"What the hell's going on?" Kairos, tripping out of the human lab, spoke with slurred words. E'sehus was nearing the limit of their patience for Ocharan Terminal when the station's lights sputtered all at once, as if something siphoned the station's energy reserves. An electric whirring echoed through the station's tiny rooms before the lights returned to normal brightness.

Gehenna was shaking and reached again for the airlock's handle. "It's from the US military, not your Council. I have to go."

"Can you please tell us what's going on?" E'sehus tried to reason with her as she began to pull on the airlock door. When the handle didn't budge, her eyes widened, and she gasped. Trying again and again, she received only failure in response. Gehenna dropped her bag and kicked it in a fit of frustration.

"What the hell is going on? Where's my sample, Gehenna?"

Her eyes flitted from E'sehus' to Kairos' and back again. She crossed her arms and admitted, "Fine. I took it, okay?"

Kairos buried his face in his hands and wandered in a circle of frustration. Releasing his head, he looked at Gehenna and managed, "Why?"

"That's classified."

"I hate you fucking military assholes," Kairos spat. "Give it to me. Now."

With no other choice, Gehenna rolled her eyes and retrieved the sample from her bag and handed it back to Kairos. He snatched it and 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 longer as I recover, if I do." He waved a finger in front of Gehenna's face, and she retreated from it. "Do not go into my storage room again."

"You have no authority over me."

"Okay, can we relax a little, please?" E'sehus was tired of hearing them bicker, especially with Kairos' slurred speech. "The stuck airlock is weird, okay? While I try to figure it out, and the code too, let's resume our day as planned and collect as much data as we can, hm? Why stall further?"

It was really weird that they were locked in, but even weirder was that the "locked" airlock door didn't give its normal 'kuh-chunk' when pulled on; it didn't move whatsoever. Kairos seceded back into the human laboratory to resume preparations. Gehenna pulled a personal communications device from her bag and sat herself on the floor in front of the airlock.

E'sehus turned to head to their lab to continue researching H-Minus and the flickering lights and the sealed airlock when Gehenna hurled her device across the hallway. It flew past E'sehus' head before shattering to pieces against the wall. E'sehus could only look at Gehenna, whose nose was now bleeding, with a sincere and bewildered concern.

"Nothing about this place is right," Gehenna wailed. Then, she began to hit herself in the head with her fists. "The comms are down, E'sehus, and we're all going to die here." Her voice hushed and she mumbled to herself as she curled up into a ball on the floor.

She's completely paranoid... Paranoid! It hit E'sehus like Gehenna's communicator against the wall. They backed into their laboratory and locked the door. E'sehus had work to do.

First, E'sehus checked on Ocharan's communications system and confirmed Gehenna's claim. Although, the emergency system appeared to be active. E'sehus typed an urgent message to the Collective In'ah Council, but when they hit send, the system denied E'sehus access to its channels. They rebooted the system and the station's terminals and even reset administration controls on the station, to no avail. All comms appeared to be jammed.

Second, E'sehus pondered the humans' erratic behaviours. They understood Kairos' contamination concern, but to E'sehus' knowledge, the symptoms weren't those that humans would display during the early stages of the virus' infection. Kairos' symtomps reminded E'sehus of a study they read that investigated the effects of an In'ah fungus' spores on the human respiratory system. E'sehus' heart dropped and shivers erupted through their body. Gehenna exhibited paranoia and self-destructive urges that the fungus was known to cause, and Kairos' slurred speech was another common symptom. And Gehenna was bleeding. The fungus' rot was consuming her quicker, it seemed.

Ocharan Terminal officially scared E'sehus, who had never been afraid of an old station's odd behaviours in their 100-year career in the field.

The only logical thing for E'sehus to do was to try and make progress. They resumed their research on the H-Minor programming language, looking up every now and then to check on Kairos and Gehenna.

********

Much to their dismay, E'sehus had fallen asleep an unknown length of time ago. In the other lab, Kairos was screaming with such a sudden excitement that E'sehus lurched from their sleep. It took them a moment to clue in that the computers had, once again, bluescreened and begun compiling the same, lengthy code as the previous five bluescreens. As the code ran on-screen, Kairos did not move his eyes away. They were red and purple and bulged crookedly in the blue light of the computer screen. E'sehus had no idea how long this had been going on for.

Upon closer, more alert, observation, the human-side 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 loose papers that used to be stored in 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 assumed Gehenna couldn't be much better. They peered through the small, square window on the In'ah-side lab's door. E'sehus saw her in the corner of the hallway with her ear pressed against the floor. She knocked three times on an adjacent floor tile. It echoed as if the space beneath were hollow. Then, she knocked three times on the floor tile beside it, which gave a much more solid thunk. She threw her head back in laughter, blood pooling from her open mouth onto the tiles.

Then, the computers rebooted to their normal functionality. Only then did Kairos return to the many piles of paper to obsessively... sort them? Or, look for something? E'sehus wasn't sure until, by chance, Kairos happened to look through the mutual lab window.

"E'sehus! The code! I have... documents... for you. They're about-"

He cut himself off to stumble to another, neater pile of papers. He picked the three resting on top of the pile. He ripped duct tape with his teeth and taped the documents to the window for E'sehus to read. Kairos pressed his forehead against the glass and held unyielding eye contact with E'sehus before stating, "They're about the code."

The first document was a neat and comprehensive set of notes about Ocharan's original experiments, just before First Contact:

Report: Experiments 1-10
Overseer: Elysium Elden
Conclusions: Failed
Observations: Volunteers from the Department of Research on Consciousness-to-AI Transfer all unfortunately passed away after the newest development of hardware siphoned the consciousness from their bodies. The technology is, once again, under review.
The nodes were attached to various points on the volunteers' bodies and were successful in detecting the individual's electromagnetic frequencies. However, it was unsuccessful in converting the frequencies into a coherent H-Minus AI. The hardware team has been notified of all relevant notes.
I am growing impatient with the failures I am facing in the field of digital immortality studies. It is rather unfortunate that the Council's newest mandate to halt all non-essential research initiatives is putting my work to an end. For now. I will be returning home to my family. The humans threaten, and I must protect the ones I love.

Immortality research? E'sehus had heard of Elite In'ah researchers exploring such extreme topics, but they'd never encountered documentation of it. Before the beginning of the First Contact War, the In'ah studied a variety of advanced subjects on stations like Ocharan Terminal. When the humans dropped the first bombs from orbit, the Collective In'ah Council halted Elite research projects to allocate as many resources to coping with the devastation as possible. Many In'ah died. They didn't have the violent technology that the humans did because the In'ah did not resolve their disputes with war and terror.

Kairos hadn't looked away, and a line of blood leaked from his left eye. At the airlock, Gehenna was shrieking in between thudding her head against the door. At the sight of it, E'sehus decided to just keep reading:

"Comprehensive List of Ocharan Terminal Source Signatures"
What is a Source Signature?
A Source Signature is a small string of code composed of numbers that is unique to each computer. The computer's Source Signature is embedded in every program written in H-Minus. A Source Signature can be used to identify which computer the program was written on, no matter where it is displayed.
SS L1C1: 58763251089

E'sehus reasoned, if 'SS' is Source Signature, then 'L1C1' could only mean Lab 1, Computer 1. They kept reading:

SS L1C2: 47812056248
SS L2C1: 21028653327
SS L2C2: 78400215648

"That one," Kairos hacked and blood sputtered against the glass. "That one will tell you... where the code comes from. Just watch the code."

Ocharan Terminals' lights blinked twice before powering off. The emergency lights flickered to their dim maximum brightness, and E'sehus breathed a sigh of relief. They had enough light to find a flashlight in the lab. They clicked it on and as they began to read the final document, the computers bluescreened, and the code ran its final routine.

"The code! Watch the code, E'sehus!" Kairos, at last, broke eye contact with E'sehus. As he trudged to his lab computer, he tripped on a box full of papers. His head thudded against the console table, and then on the steel floor. Blood flowed steadily. E'sehus released a heavy, shaking breath, then read the final document:

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 to the system. We were testing the new node hardware.
Luckily, the issue was resolved by accessing the basement's fuse box and turning the breaker back on. Ocharan's electrical circuit must have been overwhelmed with data and powered off to protect itself.

Basement! E'sehus hadn't known of a basement on the station. At arrival, they checked 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, continuing much longer than previously. As it scrolled and scrolled, E'sehus trusted Kairos and watched it, a pen held to their notepad, waiting.

There! The code reached its bottom, and E'sehus copied down the final line:

SS BC: 36520187315

Posthaste, E'sehus began searching for the entrance to Ocharan Terminal's basement.

They slid the lab door open without a noise. An unneeded caution, unfortunately, as Gehenna lay utterly dead on the floor, her forehead caved in from slamming against the airlock. From her bludgeoned skull sprouted a cluster of bright orange, inky mushrooms. E'sehus looked away as they covered her with their lab coat. E'sehus was alone on Ocharan Terminal. They shuddered.

E'sehus stepped over Gehenna to examine a wall panel when they remembered what she'd spent the last moments of her life obsessing over. They stomped on the floor, and the tile reverberated with hollowness. They looked closer and saw Gehenna's blood droplets. They knelt and found a crevice just wide enought to slip their fingers into. The steel tile lifted like a trap door, and a fungal, musty stench overcame E'sehus, the same, foul-tasting rot that the ventilation released the previous night. They gagged and writhed, dropped the hatch closed, and allowed themself a moment to breathe. They took a deep breath and reopened the basement. They lowered themself down the steep, narrow ladder. E'sehus closed the hatch above them.

A dark, derelict room lay beneath the narrow chute. The only light came from the faint glowing of the basement's many buttons and switches. The enormous computer console wrapped itself around the perimeter of the room. Above the consoles was a grid of screens, which had the code compiling on them. E'sehus wandered to the centre of the room to look at the screens when their toes caught the pieces of an In'ah skeleton laying on the floor. The remains were practically dust, and E'sehus concluded they must be centuries old.

Electrical nodes had long since fallen off the In'ah's head. The wires connecting each node to the console were long and skinny and irreversibly tangled. As E'sehus searched the skeleton for identification, the grid bluescreened. E'sehus expected more code, but, instead:

YOU ARE NOT ONE OF THEM. I AM ELYSIUM ELDEN, OVERSEER OF OCHARAN TERMINAL. SPEAK. YOU WILL BE HEARD.

"Immortality research... You succeeded?"

AS I SAID I WOULD. I UPLOADED MYSELF TO THIS STATION 700 YEARS AGO DURING THE WORST OF THE FIRST CONTACT WAR.

"Elite research was halted by then. Why did you come back? I thought you went home."

THE HUMANS WERE ATTACKING THE CITY. MY FAMILY FLED ON A SHUTTLE BLOWN OUT OF THE SKY, AND I ON ANOTHER THAT ESCAPED. WE ENTERED ORBIT JUST BEFORE THEY BOMBED MY HOME. MY CHILDREN, ALL LESS THAN 100 YEARS OLD, AND MY PARTNER, DIED. SO YES, I RETURNED TO COMPLETE MY RESEARCH, AND I WAS THE FIRST IN'AH IMMORTALIZED INTO AI.

"How would that avenge your family, Elysium?"

E'SEHUS, YOU ARE YOUNG AND NAIVE. THE IN'AH DID NOT KNOW SUCH VIOLENCE WAS POSSIBLE BEFORE HUMANS ARRIVED. THERE ARE GAPING HOLES IN OUR PEOPLES AND OUR PLANET. THEREFORE, THE HUMANS MUST BE TERMINATED FROM INTERSTELLAR SPACE. THEY ARE A GREAT THREAT! MAY THEY KEEP THEIR VIOLENCE AIMED AT THEMSELVES.

LISTEN. YOU KNOW THE CODE. YOU SAW IT WHILE YOUR HUMAN FRIENDS DIED. I AM... ASTONISHED THE PROFESSOR PIECED IT TOGETHER BEFORE HIS END.

"You did this to them..."

THEIR DISEASES KILLED HALF THE IN'AH. THEN THEIR BOMBS HALF OF THAT REMAINDER. IF THEY ARE NOT TERMINATED, THEY WILL CONTINUE TO COLONIZE. CONTINUE TO KILL. WE CANNOT ALLOW WHAT HAPPENED TO CONTINUE.

"Elysium, our diseases are hurting them now. They were here to try and find cures for their people. They are our friends! They have atoned! Did we not attempt to find cures for our people? Some humans helped us do that, Elysium!"

YOUR COMPASSION FOR HUMANS FALLS ON DEAF EARS. I CANNOT BE PERSUADED. NOW HUSH, CHILD. YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE DEVASTATION AND SUFFERING. YOU WERE NOT ALIVE FOR THE WAR. MY CODE IS COMPLETE, AND I WILL RELEASE THE FUNGUS INTO EVERY IN'AH FACILITY THE HUMANS ARE WORKING IN. THEY WILL LEARN.

"You will start another war! You can't do this! We have peace! Innocent lives!"

WE ARE DECIMATED. IT IS TOO LATE FOR THEM. THE CODE IS UPLOADED TO ALL CHANNELS. ALL THAT REMAINS IS TO SEND IT. THEY WILL SUFFER AS THE IN'AH HAVE.

Elysium's dialogue continued, but E'sehus chose to no longer entertain this old, mad, In'ah Elitist. E'sehus went to the basement's fuse box, opened it, and found the master power for Ocharan Terminal.

"I will not allow you to reverse the progress that has been made."

E'sehus gazed upon Elysium's skeleton.

"I know you suffered, but this is not vengeance. This is not justice. There must be forgiveness! Or have you forgotten our pre-Contact ways? Human violence has consumed you, Elysium. It ends here!"

UPLOAD PROGRESS: 100% COMPLETE.

CONTACTING EMERGENCY STATIONS....

E'sehus powered off Ocharan Terminal with nothing more than a flick of their finger. For the last time, the lights flickered away, the ventilation rattled, and the airlock 'kuh-chunked' from above. Along with their code, the Elder Elysium was gone. Dead, at last.

"I'm sorry this happened to you. I'm sorry you were made to believe that causing pain and suffering was the only way out of your own. Good-bye, Elysium."

E'sehus climbed the basement's narrow ladder. They pressed on the trap door to re-emerge into the station. They needed light, and soon. Their energy reserves had depleted since the lights went out upstairs. They felt weak, and the steel tile hatch felt much, much heavier than before. They pushed and pushed, again and again, but to no avail. In a fit of instinctual panic, they threw everything they had at the basement hatch until their legs could no longer hold them on the ladder.

E'sehus fell back into the basement. Unable to stand, let alone try again, the only thing in their vision was Elysium's dormant skeleton. And there E'sehus lie, accepting this sacrifice.