Onliest

by J Daniel Batt

  Onliest

  J. Daniel Batt

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. The Tiger, The Girl, and the Starship

  2. The Workbench

  3. Journal Entry: First Memories

  4. J1302-9_

  5. Through the Forest

  6. The Tea Party

  7. Investigating

  8. Ogun

  9. The Jacob

  10. Into the Needle

  11. The Gate

  12. The Voice

  13. A Bridge of Liars

  14. Journal Entry: The Zoo

  15. Through the Mirror

  16. Burlys

  17. The Scratching Between Skulls

  18. Three-headed Thieves

  19. The Barlgharel

  20. In a Twinkling of an Eye

  21. The Blessing of the Journey

  22. The Days of Delight

  23. A Dream of Stars

  24. Waking Up

  25. Partings

  26. Nod

  27. The Surprise Beyond the Gates

  28. A Nice, New Word

  29. The Queen of Olorun

  30. The First Murder

  31. A Dance of Lights

  32. Collecting the Dead

  33. Confession

  34. Menagerie and Blood

  35. Reclaiming

  36. Journal Entry: The Salvation of Eku

  37. Ascent

  38. Above It All

  39. Abel’s Blood

  40. The Great Flood

  41. Sisters

  42. Olorun

  43. Descent

  44. A Glass Darkly

  45. Resurrection

  46. Burial of a Goddess

  47. Arrival

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  References

  About the Author

  Also by J. Daniel Batt

  to Aisleyn—

  in a world of echoes, you are my true story

  to Mae and Alires—

  you brought me closer to the stars

  than I could’ve hoped

  “All things are drawn toward what is like them, if such a thing exists.

  All earthly things feel the earth’s tug...

  And things that share an intelligent nature are just as prone to seek out what is like them.”

  —Marcus Aurelius

  Prologue

  The Memories of the Barlgharel

  Composed 2970

  Between the stars, there are no seasons. Shadows of dead worlds drift in the void, but there is no laughter. Perhaps small nebulae, lit with their own faint fires, float without aim, but there are no voices. In the vast gulf—a gap far larger than the human mind can comprehend—perhaps wonders wait to be discovered. But not life.

  Life does not spread through the cosmic distances. It roots itself on the microscopic worlds that hug the warm stars.

  Life is a coward. It never ventures far from the blanket of the solar winds, and the dusting of magnetism that sparks the skies above its head.

  Between the stars, there is only loneliness. And in time, madness.

  This is a fact as constant as the tick of hydrogen spinning in its singular electron shell. Unalterable. Between the stars is death, and only fools aim to cross it.

  The great starship Olorun launched, with its own teeming masses, toward another sun. Between the stars, beyond that border, loneliness gripped it. And then madness.

  Its builders had conquered the interstellar challenges: food, energy, propulsion, habitat, radiation, laundry, medicine, and more. They were ignorant of life’s desperate pull back inward, back to the star that birthed it. Remember, life is a coward.

  Olorun launched as the pinnacle of human achievement. The builders utilized every known advancement in the construction of the behemoth starship. It roared out of the Sol system like a dragon in rage.

  Kapteyn’s Star lay ahead as its target. The red dwarf hung nearly thirteen light years from Sol. It was bright enough to be viewed by children looking through telescopes, yet the star itself was a visitor to our galaxy. Torn from the Omega Centauri cluster millennia ago, it was a much cooler star than Sol, burning nearly 3500 kelvin less.

  Rolling in orbit around Kapteyn’s Star were two super-Earths: Kapteyn-b and Kapteyn-c, named Àpáàdì and Òkè respectively. Àpáàdì was five times the size of Earth, and it orbited Kapteyn’s Star every forty-eight days. Òkè was seven times the size of Earth. The system was ancient, possibly over eleven billion years old. They are worlds twice the age of Sol itself. In millennia past, the just-waking beasts upon their surfaces could look up at night and see Sol wink into existence, forming from the clouds of stellar matter.

  Òkè was cold. Dead as the grave. A world that wished to sleep away the eons before it. It stayed silent, and its ghost would not even venture forth to haunt.

  Quite different from Òkè, the closer brother, Àpáàdì, was a gray marble with blue veins of running water coursing across its shattered surface. There are oceans of water, but they are coursing under forested surfaces. The word “temperate” crept into scientific reviews of the globe. Tempered. A calming, beckoning world.

  Why go to such a different place? It circled in the habitable zone—a range of space around each star where the requirements for life are apt to flourish—and was the closest star to Earth with such a find. Odd, alien, and enchanting.

  Àpáàdì called to the new life around Earth. “Come to me, you young ones. Beings such as you once stepped from my oceans. They have long since left, but I am still here, waiting. My forests wait for your children to run barefoot through them. My clouds wait for your eyes to marvel at them. Swim in my seas. Bring life to my ancient shell. Come.”

  And life called to life. Deep called to deep.

  Truly deep inside the human heart, that call echoed. Humanity heard it. A magnetic pull twisted their heads to that part of the sky, and the builders gazed across the gulf.

  The twinkling of stars was a cruel joke. They appeared close enough to pluck from the sky. The phantasmic darkness between Earth and distant suns was vanquished. All to make us leap across the gap.

  When we recognize the danger, it’s often far too late. We were out from the shore, unable to swim back. The dark fathoms circle. There was no foundation. Nothing below. Nothing above. Alone. Alone. Alone.

  These were the thoughts that haunted the crew of Olorun as it breached the interstellar medium. Who heard them first amongst the thousands in that metal hull? The Captain? Or a young child? A worker deep in the lower levels, close to the hull, close to the thin barrier between life and death, his hand pressed against the metal, feeling the pulse of the void? When did the maddening reminders encroach? Perhaps someone foolishly reading Lovecraft late at night? Who first opened the doors to the madness of truth?

  It did not matter. The uncontainable fact of the void would’ve encroached upon them somehow.

  Don’t make the mistake of comparing the space between stars to the simple exercise of circling the globe or navigating to the Moon or Mars. On the red soil, on the peak of Olympus Mons, the warmth of Sol can still be felt on your skin. The tug of gravity is still there, although, in such a minuscule degree it goes unnoticed. The dunes of Mars gaze upon the oceans of Earth. It is a risky trip but still within the neighborhood. Help is just a call away.

  Out here, where Sol and Kapteyn’s Star are just dots in the peripheral, loneliness was real for the first time.

  A thousand Earths—a million Earths—could careen through this frozen vacuum without touching. In a gulf so immense, madness was nature.

  Olorun blazed into the gulf and tore into the insanity between the stars.

  1

  The Tiger, The Girl, and the Starship

  “I
only wonder there were not comets and earthquakes on the night you appeared in this garden.”

  —G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

  Across the roiling space between stars, the generation starship Olorun lumbered, and deep in its spinning, cavernous hull, a girl lazed.

  Under the light of a false sun, against the gentle current of the great river Lokun, a tiger named Eku swam like a god and, stretched out on the great cat’s back, her limbs dipping below the water, lay Syn, the young queen of the abandoned starship. Her clothes, forgotten fabrics gathered from empty homes, rested strewn on the bank. Her skin, already dark as the tiger’s own stripes, soaked up the faux sunlight.

  Above them both, watching them laze in the warm afternoon, floated a white porcelain, oblong-shaped bot named Blip.

  “There're demons below the mirror,” Syn whispered, her eyes shut and her feet bobbing across the waves as Eku paddled from side to side. Each word was hung onto as if wanting to be a song.

  “Stop it,” Blip spoke in his nasal tone. His white shell displayed a blue pixelated face. A series of blue lights arranged in two circles provided him eyes, a thin line for a mouth, and, when needed to emote, a pair of eyebrows. Right now, his mouth turned down in a visible frown, and he rolled his eyes.

  “Maybe the river has no bottom. Maybe there’s a kingdom below. Maybe they’re just waiting for us to sleep, and they’ll swim up to steal us away.” She opened one eye—just a sliver—to glimpse Blip’s reaction.

  “Please,” he muttered, turning away from her.

  Syn lifted herself off the tiger and leaned over to stare at her reflection in the water. “I see one now.” She held a finger above the mirrored face. “Look at those evil eyes and that wicked grin just waiting to launch out from the other side and gobble you up.”

  He dropped to just an inch above the water in a smooth motion that was at once free fall and then instantly a solid stop, floating motionless in the air. The water below him rippled and her reflection distorted and disappeared. He gave an audible sigh—a simulation of the reaction since he had no lungs.

  “Ahh, Blip. Don’t do that,” Syn whispered, “No reason to get bitter.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Besides, you’re starting to irritate Eku.” She reached a hand above her head and stroked the tiger’s neck, curling her fingers below its ears. The tiger purred—a rumble that shook her entire body. “See? Don’t upset the kitty.”

  “I don’t see a kitty,” Blip spun around. “I see a predator.”

  Syn rose up off of the tiger’s back, “She’s a softy.” Her fingers kneaded into the great cat’s fur. “She’s as programmed as you. You know she can’t hurt me.”

  “It is impossible to completely program a tiger. With the right circumstances and provocation, her untamed instincts will take over, and you’ll see how dangerous she truly is. If you survive.”

  “Hasn’t happened yet.”

  Blip stared at the tiger. “You keep her happy.”

  Syn leaned in and whispered to Blip, “Maybe I’m the dangerous one.” She stretched out her own fingers with their long nails, each painted in a bright cacophony of colors—orange, red, silver, and pink. “See. I have claws too.”

  “You are not,” Blip huffed. “You do not.”

  Syn slipped off the tiger’s back, landing with a plop in the water. She held a finger to her lips. “Shhh. Someone might hear.”

  “There’s no one else to hear.”

  “Oh yes there are. There are thousands aboard,” She cupped a hand to her ear. “They’re just dead.” She leaned in close. “Shhh. Do you hear that?”

  “What?” Blip asked, rolling his eyes.

  “Nothing. I hear nothing at all,” She stretched out her arms and spun, “Everyone else is gone. I’m all that’s left. In this big ‘ol ship!”

  “That’s not your fault,” Blip said.

  “Oh, I don’t know that,” she smiled at him then shut her eyes and dove under. She swam through the clear water toward one of the waterfalls. It thundered in a constant downpour against the false rocks. Syn came up, her head under the stream—a dark shadow veiled by the mist.

  Eku paddled to the shore and plodded out of the water. She shook, and the fountain of water sprayed for meters. Blip had been watching Syn as she swam and had been ignoring the tiger. The spray of water showered the bot’s shell, blurring his blue-hued face.

  He flew away and yelled, “Stupid thing! Watch it.”

  Syn stuck her head out of the falls. She couldn’t hear the interaction, but she had seen enough of it to understand the situation. “Play nice,” she scolded, “Or…”

  Her words dropped off, and she shot a look skyward.

  Blip saw her gaze and turned to see what had captured her attention.

  Far above, beyond the thin wisps of clouds, a bright light shone, streaking toward the ground.

  Syn swam out from the falls, covering the distance between her and Blip quite fast. “A shooting star?” she asked as she watched the falling light and its long streak of a tail.

  “Inside Olorun?” Blip asked, his voice edged with sarcasm.

  “What is it?” Syn said.

  Within seconds, the descending streak slammed into the ground several kilometers away—far enough that the curvature of the Disc allowed them to see the impact point and the plume of smoke and dirt that had just been sent up. The horizon swept up and away as the landscape followed the inside edge of the spinning habitat ring. Whatever the streaking light was, it had landed in the jungle but nearer the edge, near the settlements—the first level of houses that formed the wall of the Disc.

  Syn ran her fingers through her dark hair. Like the tiger, she shook her head to shed the water. Her cloud of hair became a halo around her dark face. “Let’s go,” Syn said.

  “I’ll go,” Blip countered, already moving in that direction. He picked up speed on his way over the water.

  “No!” Syn shouted, stamping her foot on the ground.

  Blip halted and turned around. He cocked an eyebrow up.

  “You’re not leaving me behind again,” Syn jabbed a finger at him. “Wait.”

  She strode further out of the water and picked her clothes up from the bank. She dressed quickly, throwing the tattered garments over each other in a mismatched array.

  Blip hovered, eyeing the crash point, ignoring Syn, his constant wobble betraying his eagerness to investigate.

  From a nearby branch, she lifted up her collection of chains and necklaces and put them around her neck. From the ground, she picked up her spear—a long carbon-fiber piece she had made herself. Mirroring herself, the spear was ordained with bright silks and threads at one end and smears of paint along the shaft. She stepped up to Eku and ran her fingers through the large cat’s fur. “Now we can go.”

  The three moved ahead at a brisk pace before Syn decided to launch into a full run. She was lithe—thin, tall, and graceful. She knew this world, knew these trees and these paths. She flowed naturally through them and began to pick up speed as she let her body fall into the run.

  Beside her, Eku paced, her orange and black pattern strobing through the shadows of the overhead trees. They crossed from underbrush over crafted sidewalks that were now decaying through lack of use. The grass overgrew edges of many walkways.

  She turned onto a path, knowing it led out in a straight line toward the section they were aiming for. Once Syn’s feet hit the walkway, running lights along the edge of the path sparked to life, glowing a pure cyan. Each step was bathed in crystal blue illumination. The ship awoke for Syn—perhaps it was designed for human interaction, and since she was all that remained, the ship awoke only for her.

  The pathways, like much of the ship, served double duty. The sun above was fake—the column around which the Disc rotated was lined with sunstrips that glowed and produced the natural lighting that covered the Disc. But it was still light energy, and the ship was designed to conserve as much as po
ssible—the pathways, the roads, the tops of buildings, all of these intended by the builders to collect the light and convert it back into energy for the ship. If light fell on plants, they would use it. If light fell on manufactured surfaces, it would also be used. A conservational loop perfectly tuned.

  And now, something had entered that pristine world.

  Syn darted ahead—now only a half kilometer away from the crash. The lights glowed against her skin, and she looked like an angel flying through the forest

  A simple cleaning bot blocked her path. The puck-shaped unit scrubbed away at the debris, picking up stray branches. The bot, like all of its kind, performed its job well. It could respond and talk back. But that was all programmed—the only smart bot inside Olorun was Blip. Blip stood apart from all of the thousands of other bots that managed the world of the Disc.

  Syn leaped over the cleaning bot in a single vault and didn’t miss a pace. Ahead, the thin column of smoke rose.

  “Can’t see it. Can’t be big,” Syn said. The impact loomed ahead, smaller than she had expected.

  “Slow,” Blip said.

  “Anything?” Syn responded. Blip’s sensors often detected things invisible and overlooked by her.