by Robert Reed
On his longest, quietest legs, Alone ran.
Then the voice returned. Decades had passed since the last incident, yet it was suddenly with him—the sharp stark concept, “No,” wrapped inside a wild, infectious panic.
Alone’s impulse was to stop and ask, “What do you want?”
But the red glow was very close. Thousands of years had been spent imagining this unlikely, even impossible moment, and nothing mattered but to conquer the next few meters. Alone felt brave enough to press on. Yet bravery wasn’t required. Caught up in the excitement, he appreciated how much this mattered to him. He was happy, yes. He was thrilled and spellbound, and he refused to answer the voice or even pay attention when it came closer and grew even louder.
“Do not,” it warned.
It told him, “No. They want but they will not understand. Do not.”
The light was still visible, but it had grown weaker.
Somehow the intervening distance had grown.
But a ready explanation offered itself: The other Alone must have noticed that something was wrong. A footfall, a murmur. Perhaps his brother heard the same voice, and a wild, unapologetic fear had taken possession of him. Whatever the reason, the light was beginning to shrivel and fade away, losing him by diving inside a little tunnel, abandoning this room and possibly Bottom-E because of one irresistible terror.
Alone had to stop his brother.
But how?
He quit running.
The voice that had never identified itself—the conscience that perhaps was too ancient, too maimed and run down, to even lend itself a name—now said to him, “Go away. This is the wrong course. Go!”
Alone would not listen.
Standing on the barren plain, he made himself grow tiny and exceptionally bright, washing away the darkness. In an instant, the enormous chamber was filled with a sharp white light that reached the walls and rose to the ceiling before reflecting and reflecting and then gone.
He was dark again, drained but not quite exhausted.
With the last of his reserves, Alone spun a fresh mouth, and in a language that he had never heard before—never suspected that he was carrying inside himself—he screamed into the newly minted darkness, “I am here!”
A dozen machines suddenly emerged out of their hiding places, plunging from the ceiling or racing from blinds inside the towering rock walls.
Alone vanished.
But the machines were converging on him.
Then he grew large again, managing legs. But the power expended by his desperate flash and careless shout was too much, and too many seconds were needed before he would be able to offer any kind of chase. After ages of sameness and moments of excitement, the door of a great trap was closing over him, and in the end there wasn’t even the pleasure of hard pursuit fought to any dramatic, worthy end.
12
Since their last meeting, the two organisms had walked separate lines—tightrope existences inspired by ambition and chance, deep purpose and the freedom of no clear purpose. An observer on a high perch, watching their respective lives, could reasonably conclude that the two souls would never cross lines again. The odd machine was quiet and modest, successfully avoiding discovery in the emptiest reaches of the Ship, while the human had invested ages maintaining the giant engines, and later, tending a slow-blooming career as a new captain. Yet they found themselves together on this very peculiar terrain. With her first words, Aasleen confessed embarrassment: She had had no idea where Alone might have been and not been over these last tens of thousands of years. For decades, for entire centuries, she didn’t waste two moments pondering the device that she once cornered and then let get away. Not that she was at peace with her failure. She didn’t appreciate evidence of her incompetence, and it gnawed at her to know that somewhere onboard the Great Ship was a barely contained speck of highly compressed matter, and should that speck ever break containment, the next several seconds would become violent and famous, and for some souls, exceptionally sad.
But as an engineer, Aasleen could hand her official worries to the captains, and as a novice captain she never faced duties that had even the most glancing relationship to that old problem.
Relating her story now, she assumed that her prisoner would understand what he heard and feel interest in this curious, quirky business.
Several centuries ago, Aasleen and a second captain met by chance and fell into friendly conversation. It was her colleague who mentioned a newly discovered machine-building species. Washen had a sure touch with aliens. Better than most humans, she could decipher the attitudes and instincts of organisms that made no sense to a pragmatic, by-the-number soul like Aasleen. But the aliens had been superior engineers, which was why Washen mentioned them in the first place. Dubbed the Bakers, she described their rare genius for weaving inventive and persistent devices, and millions of years after their rise and fall and subsequent extinction, their machines were still scattered across the galaxy.
“The Bakers is our name for the species,” Aasleen cautioned. “It shouldn’t mean anything to you.”
Alone was floating above the cavern floor, encased in cages of plasma and overlapping magnetic fields creating a nearly invisible, seemingly unbreakable prison. Drifting in the middle of the smallest cage, he was drenched in vacuum, nothing but his own body ready to fuel an engine that everybody else seemed to fear.
With a flickering radio voice, he agreed. “I don’t know the Bakers.”
“What about this word?” Aasleen asked.
An intense sound washed across him. He listened carefully and then asked to hear it again. “I don’t know the name,” he confessed. “But the sounds make sense to me.”
“I’m not surprised,” Aasleen said.
Alone waited.
“We know what you are,” she said.
He told his captor, “I already know what I am. My history barely matters.”
“All right,” Aasleen said. “Do I stop talking now? Should I keep my tiresome explanations to myself?”
That sounded like a fine possibility. But machines and teams of engineers had emerged from distant tunnels, obviously preparing to do some large job. As long as the woman inside the mirrored uniform was speaking, nothing evil would be done to him. So finally, with no doubt in the voice, he said, “Tell me about these Bakers.”
“They built you.”
“Perhaps so,” he said.
“Seven hundred million years ago,” Aasleen added. Then a bright smile broke, and she added, “Which means that you are the second oldest machine that I have ever known.”
The Great Ship being the oldest.
“The Bakers were never natural travelers,” she said. “We don’t know a lot about them, and our little pile of facts mostly comes through tertiary sources. But as far as can be determined, the species didn’t send even one emissary to another world. Instead of wandering, they built wondrous durable drones that they littered across an entire arm of the galaxy. Their machines were complicated and adaptable, and they were purposefully limited in what they knew about themselves. You see, the Bakers didn’t surrender anything about themselves. They were isolated and happy to be that way. But they were also curious, in a paranoid fashion, imagining dangerous neighbors wanting to harm them. That’s why they built what looks to me like an elaborate empty bottle—a bottle designed to suck up ideas and emotions and history and intellectual talents from whatever species happens to come along. And when necessary, those machines could even acquire the shape and voice of the locals too.”
Nothing about the story could be refuted. Alone accepted what he heard while refusing to accept that any of it mattered.
“The Bakers lasted for ten or twelve million years, and then their world’s ecosystem collapsed,” Aasleen said. “They lived at the opposite end of our galaxy, and the only reason we’ve learned anything about them is because one of our new passenger species has collected several dead bottles as well as historical accounts. We don’t let any
one ride for free. Part of their payment is sharing what they know about the Bakers, and Washen knew that I would be fascinated in dead engineers. She didn’t talk for two minutes before I dropped a hand on her hand and told her that I knew where another bottle was, and this one was still working.
“‘Where is it?’ she asked.
“‘He,’ I told her, ‘He is wandering inside the Great Ship, and he answers to the very appropriate name of Alone.”
The captain paused, smiling without appearing particularly happy.
The busy workers were erecting an elaborate needle on the cavern floor, aiming it straight up at him.
“We approached Miocene with our news,” Aasleen said. “I know Washen was disappointed. She wanted this assignment, but finding you was my job, and if that wasn’t difficult enough, I was told to corral you. Washen helped profile your nature, your powers. I decided to use the promise of another machine like you as a lure, and that’s why I turned Bottom-E into a halfway famous abode for a glowing shape-shifting soul. If something went ugly-wrong down here, then at least the damage could be contained.”
“What about the LoYo?” Alone asked.
“They were moved to other quarters. The lights above are hiding sensors, and I designed them myself, and they didn’t help at all. Until you chased our fake bottle, there was no way to be certain that you were anywhere near this place.”
The needle was quickly growing longer, reaching for the cage’s outermost wall.
“What will you do now?” Alone asked.
“Strip away your engine first, and then we’ll secure it and you.” Aasleen described the process, offering incomprehensible terms along with her confidence. Yet she seemed uneasy when she said, “We intend to isolate your neural net, see what it is and how it works.”
“You are talking about my mind,” Alone complained.
“A mind that lives beside a powerful, unexploded bomb,” the captain added. “The Bakers didn’t design you to survive for this long. My best guess is that you pushed yourself outside the Milky Way, and in that emptiness, nothing went wrong. You drifted. You waited. I suppose you slept, in a fashion. And then you happened upon the Great Ship, before or after we arrived. You could have been here long before us, but of course the Bakers are lost, and you weren’t what I would consider sentient.”
“But I am alive now,” he said, his voice small and furious.
Aasleen paused.
With no apparent effort, the needle began passing through the wall of that first impenetrable cage.
“You are going to kill me,” he insisted.
The human was not entirely happy with these events. It showed in her posture, her face. But she was under orders, and she was assured enough in her skills to say, “I don’t think anything bad will happen. Research and preparation have been done, and we have an excellent team working with you. Once the danger is defused, you’ll have your memories pulled loose and set inside safer surroundings, and I think you’ll be happy. I do.”
One sudden thrust and the needle pierced the other cages, and before it stopped rising, its bright plasmatic tip was touching his center.
Damage was being done.
Quietly, fiercely, he begged Aasleen, “Stop.”
One nearby machine began to wail, the tone ominous and quickening. Aasleen looked at the data, and then too late, she shouted, “Stop it now. We’ve got the alignment wrong–!”
Then the captain and every engineer vanished.
They had been projections, fictions. The real humans were tucked inside some safe room, protected from the coming onslaught by distance and thick reaches of enduring hyperfiber.
Alone was injured and dying. But the damage was specific and still quite narrow, and the faltering mind continued, but exposed like never before. And that was the moment when the Voice that had always been speaking to him, that never stopped shouting at every soul that stood upon or inside the deep ancient hull, could be heard clearly.
“I am the Ship,” the Voice declared.
“Listen!”
13
It was not one place but it was everywhere, and Those-Who-Rule received unwelcome news. There was trouble in Creation, and there was sudden urgent talk of grand failures. A portion of the everywhere was in rebellion. How could this be? Who would be so foolish? Outraged by what they saw as pure treachery, Those-Who-Rule decided that punishment was essential, and the best punishment had to be delivered instantly, before the rebellion could stretch beyond even Their powerful reach. A ship was aimed and set loose, burrowing its way through the newborn universe. Upon reaching its target, a sentence worse than any death would be delivered. Nonexistence was its weapon—oblivion to All; the eradication of Potential and History too—and with that one talent and an insatiable hunger for success, the ship dove on and on until it had passed out of sight.
But now that act of vengeance lay in the past. Upon reflection, Those-Who-Rule questioned the wisdom of a decision made moments ago. Total slaughter seemed harsh, no matter how justified, and after a brief debate full of wasted time and self-serving confessions, these agents of ultimate power dispatched another grand vessel full of talents and desires and mighty, unborn possibilities.
That second ship chased after the first.
If it should meet its quarry somewhere out into the mayhem of newborn plasmas and raw, impossible energies, disaster would be averted. The song of life and existence and death and life born again would remain intact. But the universe was growing fast and then faster still, exploding outwards while a wicked chill seeped into the emptiness. Randomness was at work here, and blindness, and two adjacent points often discovered themselves separated by a billion light-years.
This chase would prove exceptionally difficult.
Yet the second ship’s goal could be no more urgent.
Through Creation, salvation chased the bleak end of everything, and nothing else mattered, and nothing done by mortals or immortals could compare to the one race that would grant the universe permission to live out its day.
The insistent relentless piercing Voice roared at the Bakers’ bottle, and all the while Alone felt his center leaking, threatening to explode. Finally he had no choice but to interrupt, asking his tormentor, “And which ship are you?”
The Voice hesitated.
“But you can’t be the first ship,” Alone said. “If you were carrying this nonexistence, you wouldn’t know about the second ship chasing after you, trying to stop your work…”
In a mutter, the Voice said, “Yes.”
“You must be the second Ship,” he said.
“But a third choice exists,” the Voice assured.
“No,” said Alone.
Then in terror, he said, “Yes.”
“I am,” the Great Ship said.
“Both,” Alone blurted. “You’re that first ship bringing Nothingness, and you’re the second ship after it has reached its target.”
“Yes.”
“But you can’t stop the mission, can you?”
“Half of me has tried and cannot, and half of me will resist and nothing will change,” said the Great Ship.
“You’re both ships, both pilots.”
“We are.”
“Working for opposite ends.”
“Yes.”
“And these humans,” Alone said. “They happily, foolishly ride you through their galaxy.”
“Doom everywhere, and every moment ending us.”
Alone felt weak enough to flicker out of existence, and an instant later, he was stronger than ever before. “Tell them,” he said. “Why can’t you explain it to them?”
“Why won’t they hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“At long last, yes.”
“I could tell them for you.”
“If you survived, you would explain. Yes.”
“But…”
“It is too late.”
Alone fell silent.
The Great Ship continued to talk, re
peating that same tale of revenge and the chase, of nonexistence and the faint promise of redemption.
But Alone had stopped listening. He heard nothing more. With just the eye of his mind, he was gazing back across tens of thousands of years, remembering every step taken and each step avoided, and he could only marvel at how small his long life appeared when set against the light of far suns and the deep abyss of Time.
Bridge One
There is no reason to select that one girl. Yes, she is intelligent and watchful, but many creatures, thousands of creatures, have finer minds and quicker, more thorough senses. There have been moments and tiny incidents when she might have been influenced by another’s influence, but then again, perhaps not. And yes, she seems nothing but capable, carrying herself with gentle confidence. But gifts such as capacity and self-assuredness often reach for hubris and arrogance and every flavor of disaster. Humans roam freely inside the Ship and beyond, which is why being human is a blessing, unless it is otherwise. Yet with an abundant species such as this, there must be better candidates. Where are the better candidates? What passes for eyes and a mind observes the newcomers, learning a little more about these sacks of lucid water and their elaborate implants, the species’ brief history and their cherished beliefs, and even more critical, the gaps of belief that might play roles in what has barely begun.
No compelling reason demands to select the young Washen, and this is just another reason to let the search continue elsewhere.
A goal teases, always.
The universe has found the Great Ship, and they have found nothing. An object belongs to no one if it remains unknown, and humans have grabbed up a vast contraption that cannot be measured by any worthy scale. Ignorance rules. The captains are brilliant fools. Their uniforms are made of mirrored fabric, half-alive and regal, but their uniforms are also woven from arrogance and status and small experiences never tested properly and lessons never applied in suitable proportions. The fabric might fall away on occasion, but a naked captain squatting over a scented toilet is still a captain, bound by the office and buoyed by rank and to some degree or another endowed by senses of duty that can help feed what every animal would understand as raging, insatiable ambition.
