“What’s happening?”
“I have to say goodbye,” Mick said. “I’m saying it now, before all of the bad stuff happened. I needed to say it before. I didn’t know how, but I’m saying it now. Goodbye. I love you. I never meant for anything bad to happen. I made mistakes, and I wanted to learn from them, and to make everything right. This is the best I can do.”
His boyish cheeks turned red, as if he was embarrassed. She didn’t want him to feel that—all she knew was that she didn’t want him to feel that way.
“But we’re just kids, growing up in a messed up world. You did what you had to, but you loved us. I know you did. I’ll always be here, and I’ll always love you.”
“You’re my best friend.”
“Don’t go yet!” she said as he pulled away. The images of the dance hall started to reform—the players, the music, the dresses, the food, the flowers, the candles, the excitement and the noise.
She watched the V of his back as he disappeared into the crowd of dancers. She raced in, excusing herself as she pushed everyone aside to reach him.
“Mick!” she called, over and over, as the faces around her looked away, oblivious in their ecstasy.
70
Send us all. We can make it.
Mick stared at FOD, waiting for a response, unsure if it would arrive telepathically or aloud.
“Can’t, just won’t work,” he said. Axa came close to them, leaned in with her tense body.
“I don’t want to die. Please. I never cared before, never cared. But you got me into this, you brought me out here, made it so that I do care now. I want to get to Utopia.” She looked into FOD’s eyes, expecting him to act like a god, to flick the blips off the radar with a flick of his finger.
“I’m sorry. You’ll never see Utopia. There is nothing that can be done.”
“Send us all through the fucking particle transmission!” Mick roared.
He struck at FOD. FOD nearly fell, then righted himself and stared back, unflinching, affirming with his eyes alone what he’d already made clear.
“Why not?”
“No .HUM is without a plant, except yours.”
“It’s worth a shot.”
“No. It’s not a shot. It’s certain torture, painful suffering, for the longest duration imaginable.”
Mick stopped, backed off. I don’t understand.
You will. You must do this. If I sent our .HUMs along with you, the UCA decryption field would reverse the scramble, intercept everyone but you. Then you’d hear about our fates on the Universe Media Line. Is that how you’d like to remember this?
Axa went to the cockpit window.
“You must promise me something,” FOD said.
“Everyone has broken their promises to me. Everyone is asking me to promise them something.”
“Promise me you’ll travel here—” FOD said, and he took out a small screwdriver of plastisteel. Mick looked at it with confusion.
“What the fuck is that?” Mick asked.
“Hold still,” FOD said, pushing the tip of the device against the back of Mick’s head. It made a small whine then drove into his skull.
“Fuck…”
“You have the coordinates memorized now. When you wake up, there will be a ship. Take it. You’ll need to go to the first location, get the fuel cell for the G10. The second is my lab—no one will be able to track you there. You’ll be able to set the ignition time, that will give you enough time to get back to the T-jump station, which is the last set of coordinates.”
“You want me to blow the universe apart?”
“I want you to hit reset. We didn’t work out.” FOD turned away, he couldn’t watch; the fate of twenty years of activism, and his final measure of justice, rested in the hands of a foreigner, both of space and time. “Here,” he continued. He handed Mick the plastic containing all the UCD he had. “More than enough for your T-jump. More than enough for a million.”
It’s not the future you want. But it will be preventable. And in this world, deep down inside, you know he’s right. It has to be done. Mankind has become a mass generator of suffering for the sake of ignorant bliss.
FOD interrupted: We are an abomination. We do not need to feel shame for what we’ve become, but we have to take responsibility. Thousands of years have proven we can’t do it. But here we are. You have one last chance to do it.
I’ll do it.
I knew you would.
71
Mick wandered down to the hull bay. He heard Axa scream and run back to meet FOD somewhere near the galley. She yelled something about the UCA fleet, that it had encircled them.
“She’s all fired up, Mick,” FOD called over the com.
“Be right there,” he replied. He stepped down three metal grate stairs, turned around a cargo box, and saw a table. Spread out on it were chess pieces, brown and tan, made of wood—XJ’s prized possession. On one side, sitting on a crate, was GR. He clicked, sounded a series of beeps, and moved his queen into a position to attack XJ’s king.
“Just what I intended, GR. Precisely what I intended,” XJ hooted. Steam, as if in direct correlation to his glee, spouted from his neck. He reached hastily for his knight, which GR had neglected to notice had snaked between his king and queen. “A fork. You must deal with that GR, if you don’t want to give up.”
“That’s a nasty trick. And you don’t understand why I won’t play with you? Sometimes I wonder—I wonder if you’re faking the alzeimagnetism, if you’ve been faking it all along. How else could you continue to play such shrewd chess?”
“Alzei-nothing. Alzei-nothing, my friend.” XJ smiled, turned to Mick. “Have a seat Mick.”
“I can’t XJ. I have to go.”
Mick knelt by the board, eye-level with the droids.
“Are you sure? This will be over in a moment.”
“I see that. You’re doing a great job. You know that? Both of you guys.”
“Mick, I am certain there is a lie in this robot,” GR said. “He claims ignorance one minute, and then, the next, he is operating at ten trillion processing parameters per millisecond. I just don’t understand sometimes.”
“Me too,” Mick said. He reached out, touched the cold steel of XJ’s hand, half-expecting warmth. The cold met his heat, and they drew closer to each other’s temperature. His other hand extended to GR. “It’s been really nice getting to know you. I’m sorry I couldn’t get you where she wanted. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it happen.”
“Mick, don’t be silly. Why, you’re leaking! GR, get a towel,” XJ ordered.
“No, I’m fine. I am.” He wiped away his tears.
“Well hurry back then. And tell Sera we’re waiting for her.”
“I wonder—maybe you are on to something, XJ. Maybe she is coming.”
“She’ll be here. And I’ll play you before I go to sleep, okay?”
“It’s a deal Mick.”
Mick walked away, and already GR started to bicker about losing his queen.
Clank. Clank. Clank. Mick ascended the stairs.
“Hey Mick—” XJ called.
“Yea?” he turned, wiping his eye before he was grilled for leaking again.
XJ’s eyes lit up and a stereo recording played from his head:“Everybody’s gree-heen, because I’m the one who won your love.”
“Do you know that song Mick?” XJ asked.
“You had it on when you told me what year it was. I didn’t believe you, did I?”
“No you didn’t. The Beatles, Mick. They’re called The Beatles.”
“I’ll have to look them up.”
FOD appeared in the hall. “Now or never. Come on.”
72
Mick walked past the infirmary station into a small chamber with a head-mounted display. He put it on after FOD’s instruction.
“This won’t hurt a bit,” said FOD.
Mick looked down at his hands, his arms, his legs. To his side was a cabinet panel; he peered into his reflection, ga
zing for the last time at his own body. A dark, hairy, haggard face stared back. The look was exhaustion.
How could hope still burn in that face?
“Occupying a cellbot is just like what you’re already used to, nothing will be awkward or strange, you’ll just look different. You’ll be a little stronger. A lot stronger.”
A siren sounded from the cabin.
“That’ll be five thousand meters,” he said calmly.
He’s so unafraid of death, even in the face of not knowing if everything he’s worked for will even happen.
You’re right. I am unafraid. Do you know the reason I spout ancient poetry, as you call it?
No—why?
Because it was the closest to self-truth man ever came. Today, it is gone. Replaced by the invisible force.
Mick watched Axa lie flat on the metal floor of the corridor, eyes closed, arms over her head. Turbulence rocked the ship.
Do you know there’s even a poem for such a parting as this?
All of it?
Listen close, close your eyes, and go: I leant upon a coppice gate when Frost was spectre-gray, and Winter's dregs made desolate the weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky like strings of broken lyres, and all mankind that haunted nigh had sought their household fires. The land's sharp features seemed to be the Century's corpse outleant, his crypt the cloudy canopy, the wind his death-lament. The ancient pulse of germ and birth was shrunken hard and dry, and every spirit upon earth seemed fervourless as I. At once a voice arose among the bleak twigs overhead in a full-hearted evensong of joy illimited; An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, in blast-beruffled plume, had chosen thus to fling his soul upon the growing gloom. So little cause for carolings of such ecstatic sound was written on terrestrial things afar or nigh around, that I could think there trembled through his happy good-night air some blessed Hope, whereof he knew and I was unaware.
73
A thousand dreams passed in the blink of an eye. All of human emotion and history. Then nothingness, just the poem.
He awoke, looked down, and saw someone else’s hand where his should have been. There, in its place, was a robotic hand. He stood up inside a high tube next to a console station. He looked around at an empty warehouse. Then he saw it—a ship, just like FOD had said. It was another light-class, but somehow, as futuristic as it was to him, he recognized something about it—the exterior was all black, without a notch or any other kind of identifying mark. That son of a bitch. He did have one last contingency plan.
Mick stepped forward, new power in his gait. Next to the ship, on a broad computer table, lay a set of keys. He grabbed them, climbed aboard, and started to test the throttle and navigation display.
“This is the computer. Please enter your coordinates.”
“This is Mick. I’m a thousand year old hunk of meat looking to get home. What do you say we hit the trails?”
“That did not register, please repeat.”
“2.56743 x 2.2113042 x d7 o 9.12 {0.0011138},” he said from memory.
“Coordinates received. Prepare to enter space.”
74
FOD descended the stairs quickly, metal clanking under his feet. He felt tired, ready to go. He’d done everything he could—the rest, he was powerless over.
“Boys,” FOD said.
“Oh, it’s you,” GR said.
“Don’t know what to make of him, do you?” XJ asked his friend.
“You were the one who said that—those are your words,” GR replied.
“Have you seen Mick? He’s supposed to play me next,” XJ asked.
“He’s waiting for you to make your move,” FOD said, pointing at XJ’s pieces. XJ had to make one single pawn movement, and the game would end in checkmate.
XJ reached out, grabbed the pawn, slid it across the wood grain, then looked up and smiled.
FOD extended both of his arms, pistols in his hands. The droids’ slumped to the floor. A wailing came from the corridor behind him. He turned, then slowly traced his way back to Axa. She was still lying against the cold steel.
A loud crash shook the ship, the first wave of weaponry hitting the near-field disintegrators. FOD sat down.
“Do you know, as a child, I was once optimistic about our species?” he said, smiling. Axa looked up from between her arms, wondering why he bothered to speak at all. They would soon be dead. “I did. I saw the best in people. In my childhood stories they called all people, all animals, all life—friends. Each was a friend. When I hardened into a man, the cover was pulled, thread by thread, until I understood. I understood what it all meant. Was it ever that way? The way the stories and poems say it was? If it was, I cannot say. History does not go that far back.”
Another rocket blasted into the near-field disintegrator, rocking FOD over. He landed next to Axa on the floor. He stared at her beautiful face, its perfect form, symmetrical, designed by humans, for humans, to be the epitome of salable beauty.
“You, me. We are products of human thought.”
He reached his hand out, touched her. She was surprised to find that it was warm. She had expected his touch to be equivalent to his gaze, his distant, cold appearance. He took off his robe, exposing his bare chest, his legs. He moved on top of her. She could not help it—she pulled his warm pseudoskin down into her.
“There was once a thin veneer between us and primitive animals. We strengthened it, thickened it, so much that it became something more than a veneer. It became a set of blinders, so severe, that there could not be conceived a connection from us to any other creature. Finally, from us to even ourselves. All of it was lost. The falcon could no longer hear the falconer. The centre could no longer hold.”
“Please, kiss me,” Axa said. He was the last thing that could ever happen to her.
“Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me, will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.”
He drove into her, ripping her clothes away, drowning in her legs, locked into her calm eyes as the walls of the ship exploded. Their mouths shared in each other’s, and then the freezing vacuum of space.
75
“You have arrived at your destination,” said the computer.
“Thanks,” Mick replied. “What’s your name?”
“I am UCA ship-comproc 11.3112.”
“Comproc. I like it,” Mick said. He grabbed a pistol from the cockpit and stepped down to the landing.
Family. Tunnel vision for them. That’s it. Kill whomever, whatever else you see.
After entering the fuel facility, a clerk came up to Mick.
“Sir, I will need to see some identification,” said a young woman.
“Here.” He raised his pistol, firing into her mouth. He moved past before the blood could pool.
A guard rushed out from by the elevator. “Stop right there!”
Mick fired again. The guard fell. Room 13—it was all somehow in Mick’s memory. He reached the large metal panel in front of the door, punched in a code. The door whizzed open, and he saw the fuel cells. Bright orange, smoke rising from them. Cold. He grabbed one and returned to Comproc. A scientist stood by the door, examining it, looking for some sign of affiliation.
“You won’t find it, she’s a black hull,” he said. With a low buzzing thunder, he shot and killed the scientist. “Comproc, break planetside please.”
76
The black hull light-class cruised through a long, rippling plume of spacedust. In the viewscreen, Mick watched a tiny moon enlarge. Ominously radiating behind it was a purple gas giant. Mick double-checked the coordinates FOD had given him.
“Take her down,” he told the computer. The ship, already in descent, ignored his command. The port windows frosted as the ship dove through a thin layer of lunar atmosphere.
“Landing imminent, remain locked in position,” said Comproc.
“In position,” Mick said.
One more stop after this. The final steps. In my wake a deluge of destroyed pr
omises. I, I am the only one left.
The ship hit dusty soil, releasing a wave of debris into low gravity. The hull door opened at the rear of the ship and Mick walked out, pistol drawn. In front of him was a metallic hut carved from the side of a sandstone crater. He reached some silver inlaid steps, hopped down, and ventured through a door that emptied him into blackness.
He didn’t say there’d be no lights.
Working from the starlight that had followed him down the stairs, Mick searched for a switch. He found several knobs, hit them. Nothing.
No instructions. Why even make the stop here? Why follow through? Go straight to the third location—T-jump the hell out.
Black Hull Page 20
