The Last Human

by Zack Jordan

  The low metallic ringing grows more intense with each leaf, and Shenya the Widow twitches her mandibles in a smile. Shokyu the Mighty may dispute it, but she knows that it is responding to her personally. A Librarian this small certainly doesn’t breach legal tier, but it is intelligent enough to know where its food comes from. “Mother’s here,” she croons in a gentle singsong, releasing a leaf of a different species. “Of course you’re glad to see me. Who else knows what you like? Who else brings you treats?”

  [Oh, you’re a Mother now?] asks Shokyu the Mighty.

  [Watch yourself], she says gently, a very clear warning in the attached emotions.

  [I’ll never understand why you find this so appealing.]

  Shenya the Widow lets a long moment pass before accepting this change of subject. [Of course you won’t], she says, the inebriant rocketing through her system nearly causing her to add little idiot to the end of the message. In fact, one moment as she reviews the transcript to see what she actually said. Let us see…the Mother comment, the warning…the subject change…and no, she did not. But no, little idiot, you do not criticize a Widow’s use of titles while you wear an unearned title yourself. Consider yourself fortunate you deal with Shenya the Widow and not her own mother, or you would have been shredded long ago for daring to—

  And then a blade brushes the edge of the gravity field, and Shenya the Widow is extracted from her reverie with the screech of chitin on metal. She panics for only a split second before getting her other blades set for a mighty pull—and she is free! Weaving, she examines herself for damage. Her body is flawless as always, a shining testament to the prowess of Shenya the—

  “Why, you little tyke!” she says unsteadily, staring at a notch in the end of her best blade. “We don’t eat Mother!”

  [This is exactly what I’m talking about], says Shokyu the Mighty.

  Well, perhaps there is something to the corporation-wide aversion to Librarians. Not everyone grows back, after all. Most of the other corporate explorers refuse to leave dock with a Librarian on board, let alone journey lightyears—but then they share the same handicap as her implant, don’t they? They are not Widow. They are of weaker peoples, and they prefer to return to corporate with holds full of trash. But Shenya the Widow knows that this is letting fears interfere with profits, and that is why she is the corporation’s sixth-most-profitable employee. Or she was, three years ago, when she left Networked space. That is…thirty years Standard? She cannot even do relativistic math when sober. Anyway, that is beside the point, which is this: why return with sixty tons of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and so on when one can simply store the patterns and discard the material itself? The size of one’s cargo hold makes no difference when one travels with a Librarian. Everything it consumes, from soil to minerals to living things, will be organized and stored in its mind. And if corporate truly wants a physical example of a particular item to study, why, they can ask it nicely and it will make them one.

  She has lost count of the number of loads she has brought this Librarian in the last few days, but the feeding never loses its appeal. She always offers the silver globe one item at a time, working her way up in both size and novelty as if she’s serving it an elaborate multicourse meal. Today, she moves from leaves to complete plants, to a few crude tools she scavenged—which the Librarian loves, judging by the noise level—and finally the pièce de résistance. She lifts it up from the floor, where she’s kept it hidden as a surprise.

  “Hello!” Shenya the Widow says in her singsong, supporting the severed head with two blades and moving the small jaw with a third. “My name is Observer, and I am extremely annoying.”

  She can see the head’s reflection in the silver surface of the Librarian, its gold eyes half shut and its white hair stiff and brown with dried fluid. The ringing grows louder, and the reflection distorts as a small mound forms in the perfect sphere. She is always pleased when this happens. The Librarian is naturally quite fluid, but it takes great strength for it to shift its shape in the titanic grip of a ten-gravity field. When it reaches for her like this, Shenya knows that she has something good. Something novel. And in her business, novel means profitable.

  Additional blades lift random body parts for feeding. “Please, enjoy my hideous skin-covered legs!” says the head in the voice of Shenya the Widow.

  “I apologize,” the head continues when the legs are gone, Widow blades working the small jaw up and down. “Normally I have two arms, but your mother could only find one.”

  “Uh-oh!” it says when the arm has sunk beneath the Librarian’s surface. “Who’s ready for my scrumptious torso? You are? Here it comes!”

  The Librarian is nearly shaking the bulkheads with its call, clearly pleased with the meal. In fact, it has continued to reach for her even after it has absorbed the largest parts of Observer, a fact which would make her nervous if she wasn’t on her third—fourth?—inebriant bar. Instead, she is proud. Why, you could not have done that at the beginning of this voyage, little one! Mother has your gravity field nearly maxed, and yet you can move! Oh, little one, we must play a game!

  Inspired, she lowers the head out of sight, then back, for a quick game of hunt-the-prey. She does this twice before realizing that something is wrong. The hump in the silver surface, the place where the Librarian is straining toward her—it has not moved. She glances at the notch in her blade and clicks uncertainly. But if the Librarian is not reaching for Observer’s head…does that mean it is reaching for her? She flicks an unsteady Widow smile toward her own reflection. “Why, little one!” she says. “Have you finally acquired a taste for Mother?”

  [For the Network’s sake], says Shokyu the Mighty. [Just give it the head.]

  But the head is not the problem, little idiot. In fact…it pains her to think, but is she the idiot? Is it possible that, this whole time, the Librarian was not yearning for her little treats, but for her? Does Shenya the Widow now find herself three and a half years into deep space, alone with a Librarian who has very nearly outgrown its containment and which now hungers for her own beautiful body?

  Her appetite for entertainment now gone, she raises the head and allows the field to tear it from her grasp. She watches the flesh flatten and the golden eyes widen in the massive grip of the gravity field, but the joy is gone. The eyes stare at her as the whole hideous mess sinks, backward, into the singing metal.

  And the hump does not disappear.

  [If I could shudder], says Shokyu the Mighty, [I would.]

  Shenya the Widow will never admit that she is repressing a shudder of her own. [I have never understood the revulsion at Librarians, personally], she says lightly, but she is troubled. She backs away one step, and the small distortion does not change. But still, says her intoxicated mind, there is a large difference between a slight shape change and an actual escape. [Librarians are quite useful], she continues, determined not to allow her implant to witness her discomfort. [Did you know the best surgeons in the sector are Librarians?]

  [And yet I note you had me installed the old-fashioned way. Perhaps you don’t trust them quite enough to let one dissolve your head?]

  The truth is, Shenya the Widow does not. In fact, during her early career one could say she was actively hostile to her Librarian—or at the very least, treated it no better than a sanitation station. But then something happened to change the mind of Shenya the Widow forever. She returned from a particularly long voyage to find an unfamiliar ship in dock at corporate. This was not unusual; when missions last a century, the odds of any two explorers being docked at the same time are low. It was the ship itself that was unusual—and its crew.

  To begin with, it was the most beautiful ship she had ever seen: a silver blade that flashed like lightning in the night. But upon inquiry, she was shocked to learn that it was both made by and crewed by one gigantic Librarian. In a very literal sense, Blazing Sunlight was its own
ship. It was made of the same amorphous metal here in front of her, but the size of an Interstellar. She remembers her awe at this being that had gained so much knowledge about the universe that it could produce—that it could be—its own starship. Reactors, gravs, sensors, anything an Interstellar could possibly need, all produced when needed and absorbed when not. And unlike her own little Librarian, this one far exceeded legal tier.

  Shenya the Widow, corporate wheeler-and-dealer that she was, lost no time in introducing herself to the ship. After a few moments of difficult conversation—it was not the most talkative of intelligences—she became aware of something that unnerved her greatly, that made her realize that perhaps she did not quite understand how the universe worked. This gigantic Librarian—which she had never seen before in her life—knew her very well. It knew her journeys, it knew what she had found, it knew what she had brought back. It knew, she registered with a shock, everything that her small Librarian knew. Of course she knew they were both Networked beings, but this was something beyond that; this was as if they were parts of the same being, two cells in a Networked mind that spanned the galaxy. That was when she began to wonder: could, perhaps, the entire Network be described this way? Could one think of it as a gigantic mind that lies atop the galaxy like oil on water, its scattered drops running together or separating as—

  [Watch it!] cries Shokyu the Mighty.

  Shenya the Widow whips her blades to her body, staring at the silver pseudopod that has grown out from the sphere. It extends farther, trembling, easily eight centimeters out…now twelve…sixteen. She fumbles for the manual controls with wayward blades, her sedated mind still very capable of imagining her ship being eaten from the inside out. She finally maxes the gravity field, but the limb only shortens slightly under twelve gravities. Panicking more than she would ever admit to her implant, she stabs a second control, and the continuous drone is cut off when the hatch slams shut.

  She hovers a blade over a third control and watches the seal between the twin hatches. There is an automatic system in place, but she doesn’t trust it. If she sees even a hint of silver between those doors, the whole inner chamber is going straight into the void. It will be difficult to explain to corporate—and still more difficult to explain to any giant Librarians she might meet—but better that than a hungry flood of metal on the loose. She has no intention of arriving back at headquarters as nothing but a pattern in her own Librarian’s memory.

  She watches the interior feed for a full minute. Nothing but a perfect sphere, floating in its gravity field. [That was odd], she says. [It has never shown a taste for me before.]

  [It still hasn’t], says her implant.

  And then, even in her slowed mental state, Shenya the Widow understands. In her peripheral vision, which extends nearly to the back of her head, a pair of eyes stares at her from the darkness of the common room. And the hatred of Shenya the Widow—for a few moments dormant under the innocent joy of feeding a dismembered Observer to a Librarian—is rekindled. A blade scrapes down the closed containment hatch, drawing sparks from the metal and a flinch from the Human. Ah, my Librarian, my shining one and the joy of my hearts. You want a Human, do you? Fear not, my little one, for you shall have one.

  But you will need to wait your turn.

  [AivvTech Mnemonic Restoration]

  [Stage 1]

  * * *

  #

  [You’re doing great! I have observed some complex reactions in your emotional state, but it should reassure you to learn that this is perfectly normal. However, to err on the safe side, I will now proceed with several Stage 1 memories of shorter duration.]

  * * *

  #

  [Initiating memory transfer…]

  * * *

  #

  The Human is screaming, clutching one of its upper appendages with the other. It is folded up on the floor, its stubby lower limbs pushing it as far back against the cargo bay door as it can go. Drops of a bright red fluid dot the deck in a scattered trail back to Shenya the Widow.

  —TRANSFER INTERRUPTED—

  [Unexpected memory collision. Adjusting parameters…]

  * * *

  #

  It hurts, but the unfamiliarity is worse than the pain. Everything is hard here, hard and dark and a demon lives here. It stalks around this place and clicks and hisses at her and she screams for her mother and father, but for the first time in her life no one comes. There is only the thing in the darkness—

  * * *

  #

  [Parameters adjusted successfully.]

  —TRANSFER RESUMING—

  Shenya the Widow crouches in the center of the deck and examines the small figure. Her hatred of its symmetrical four-limbed form, bred into her since she was but a Daughter, has been subsumed into…annoyance. Yes. It is actually quite difficult to hate when one is this exasperated—and could there be anything more irritating than that goddess-awful racket that is coming from the wet hole in that head? Actually, as the stench reminds her, there certainly is. For example: the fact that it has just finished soiling the floor with its waste when there are two perfectly good sanitation stations on this ship.

  Three and a half years to go. Three and a half years. There is absolutely no way she will be able to stand this thing for that amount of time. It is laughable to her that she ever thought she could. Was she inebriated? Well…most likely. But even if she locked it in the cargo bay, even if she could persuade the Librarian to produce some sort of food for it, even if it learned to use a sanitation station instead of the floor—look at it! Look at it leak on the floor, even now! That red liquid continues to soil her perfectly clean deck—

  “Why,” hisses Shenya the Widow, “do you not stop the leakage?”

  [Perhaps it can’t], says Shokyu the Mighty. [And perhaps you should do some research before continuing with your Widow discipline methods.]

  Shenya the Widow hisses softly, deciding if she is going to speak further or just end the thing’s life now. She began intentionally speaking aloud as a drunken experiment, as a bet with her own Network implant. Can a Human learn Standard? Was the question, but so far the answer has been a resounding no. She should have given up days ago, but Shenya the Widow does not easily admit defeat. That, and it seemed a waste to be blessed with the galaxy’s only captive Human and not run at least a few experiments on it. But now she is sober, and within her burns a mighty annoyance. Wager be cursed! If this thing is going to continue scurrying and squeaking and cowering and soiling the floor on a daily basis, well, this experiment will be coming to a very final close, and very soon.

  And then the screaming transitions from piercing to painful.

  “Enough,” hisses Shenya the Widow, unfolding to her full height. Yes, enough is enough. Into the Librarian you go, you disgusting Human. She stalks toward it, blades out, fully expecting to have to catch the slippery thing when it scrambles away from her.

  “No!” shrieks the Human, staying where it is. It clutches its wounded appendage and leans forward, as if to give more force to the word. “No!”

  Shenya the Widow stops dead. [Was that…Standard I just heard?] she says in her head.

  [Looks like I lost a bet], says Shokyu the Mighty. [Perhaps you should publish this fear- and pain-based curriculum.]

  Shenya the Widow watches the small thing carefully. “So you can learn,” she says out loud.

  [Raising Your Human: A Guide to Training Your Offspring with Fear], says Shokyu the Mighty.

  “But you heard it as well, did you not?”

  [Secrets of Cross-Species Child-Rearing: A Terror-Based Approach.]

  “If you have better ideas for disciplining vicious aliens, I am listening,” snaps Shenya the Widow. “My mother actually removed parts of me as a method of discipline.”

  [That’s the mother with whom you shared such a joyous relationship?]

/>   “It is,” hisses Shenya the Widow.

  [Far be it for me to judge the parenting techniques of another species], says her implant, [but if I’m not mistaken, your pieces grow back.]

  Shenya the Widow taps her damaged blade against a mandible with an audible click. Fortunately they do, or she would be left with a Librarian love bite for the rest of her life. “True,” she says. “But just because I grow back doesn’t mean—”

  And then her instincts flatten her to the deck. An object flies through the space her head recently occupied, ricochets off the bulkhead behind her, and bounces to a stop on the floor. Shenya shifts her gaze from the object to the Human, amazed.

  [Did it just throw its foot covering at you?] asks Shokyu the Mighty.

  Shenya the Widow is nearly too shocked to reply. “I…believe it did,” she says.

  [Let me guess], says Shokyu the Mighty. [Now you’re going to have some Widow fun with it before it goes into the Librarian.]

  But Shenya the Widow does not respond. She examines the small figure. Even if it were not a Human—and the name alone brings her internal fluid pressure up—it would be a hideous mess of a being. Between its general pudginess, its skin wrapping, and the various fluids it seems to produce nonstop from everywhere, it is the least attractive thing she has ever seen. And yet…do not the proverbs say that the carapace tells only half the story? This repulsive little thing attacked something larger than itself, something it had no hope of defeating, and it did so while wounded. That, to a Widow, deserves some thought.

  “No,” hisses Shenya the Widow, softly.

  [Well then, your experiment in motherhood continues], says Shokyu the Mighty.