“Do it,” he said. His voice still had that smooth and modulated sound, but it was gentler.
“Yeah, okay, no problem,” King said as he drew his sidearm and began to walk toward him. Before he could get there, however, Kit stepped around the android and held up his one remaining hand, never taking his eyes off of the smoking figure.
“Wait,” Kit said, his voice soft.
“Bullshit, wait,” King said. “He looks more dangerous now than he did before.”
“If he is, then you’re not going to be able to do anything to him anyway.”
King ground his teeth. “Look man, I’m not taking chances here. All of our lives are at risk. Not to mention the lives of whoever comes across this murderous psychopath in the future.”
“Well, I am,” Kit said, his face unreadable behind the opaque faceplate. “And I’m also not asking.”
“Whoa guys,” Ritz said, stepping forward. The room felt surprisingly wide and spacious now that it wasn’t ass-to-elbows in monsters. “How about we both step back for a second.” He drew his sidearm as he walked over to 49. Off to his left, he saw Raquel tip-toeing over to her armor to fish her clothes out.
“Do you want us to kill you?” Ritz asked, his voice as gentle as he could make it. He fought to suppress all of the coiled and humiliated rage he felt boiling in his gut. 49 just nodded. “And what if we don’t?”
“Then I am lost,” the android said.
“Explain, please.”
“The Light Core, it’s…” Moments passed as no one spoke. Then finally: “I saw. I see.”
“What. What do you see?”
He shook his head. “All the same things I saw before, except…except, I feel them now. I feel the gaps in between them. The quiet moments before the massacre. The bonds of friendship between two people who otherwise disagree. I can see them. I literally see them.”
“What do you mean?” King asked. “I don’t see shit.”
“It was there the whole time,” he continued. “In the ship’s log.”
“Whoa, wait. What was there?”
“On the Mary. The security footage. I sat there and I listened to Father Willard as he practiced his sermons, but there were other things too. Moments of warmth and tenderness among him and the crew. Fleeting exchanges…They’re small, I know. And in the grand scheme of things they might be meaningless but, I don’t know.”
“How come you see it now?” Byzzie ventured. “I mean, you had access to the ship’s log the whole time. Shit, you probably saw it all as it was happening.”
“I didn’t know what I was looking at. When you’re focused on a single point in space, everything else falls to the margins. I saw but I didn’t see. Then you hit me with the Light Core.” He looked up at Raquel, who was just pulling her T-shirt over her head. “And it was literally like throwing a light on. I saw it all and was called to make a judgment on it. For the first time, I wasn’t filtering out what I had perceived as pertinent information. I was just able to sit with it. It wasn’t nothing. It was everything.”
He looked down at his hands which were now silver, metallic, and smooth. They could have just as easily been human hands wearing silver gloves. Then he returned his attention to Raquel. “You stayed.”
“I did,” she said, reaching down to grab her socks. “Looking back on the five short years I remember of my life, I had a hard time deciding if it meant anything. I had failed at all sorts of things, hurt all sorts of people, and I wondered if I wasn’t better off dead. I really took your words to heart you know, and the song actually helped me see the truth of them.”
“Which was?”
“You were right. My life was meaningless, at least to me. I had no past. No future. So why not just let it all drift away?”
“What changed your mind?” 49 asked, genuine curiosity in his voice.
“We were trying to think of a Plan B if we failed to stop you. Some other option where—if we couldn’t save ourselves, then at least we could preemptively save whoever might come across you the next time. We got a little sidetracked and then Kit asked me what kind of ammunition I wanted and I had to make a decision. Live or die. Fight or give in. So, I decided both.”
49 looked at her in confusion and Ritz felt the same expression fall on his own face.
“My life was meaningless; I knew that. But when I was given a choice it was suddenly made clear: the choice was mine. It was up to me to decide whether or not to make my life mean something. So, I figured I’d live but if it came down to it, I’d also die. I stepped out of my clothes and armor because I couldn’t take the chance of you sending your forces after me when you realized I wasn’t there. And good thing too because I had a hell of a time getting this thing loose. Byzzie must have welded the damn thing in place.”
“That’s exactly what I did, actually,” Byzzie said. “This ship wasn’t made to hold a Light Core so I had to install a few workarounds.”
“I arrived back here at just about the point where the tide turned. I waited a bit longer for you to show yourself—I couldn’t take the chances of this thing just blowing up a part of the ship, you had to blow up. It had to hit you.” She shook her head. “When I threw it at you though, I thought it was going to go off like a bomb. I fully expected everyone here to die.”
“So, you were willing to die,” 49 said. “But you wanted to make it mean something.”
Raquel nodded.
“How about now? Do you still want to die? You can’t erase all of your failures with one good act.”
“I know,” she said. “But dying won’t erase them either. The most I can do is try to be better—to do better.”
“This is all very inspiring,” King cut in. “But we still haven’t decided what to do with this asshole.” He pointed at 49.
“You asked us to kill you,” Raquel said. “You said that if we didn’t, then you were lost. Why?”
The android stared at the floor for a moment. “Because my failure had been so catastrophic. So vast and genocidal. I failed here and I failed there. I felt totally and absolutely lost.”
“I hear you using the word ‘felt,’ as in past tense,” Raquel said. “Do you still feel that way?”
“After listening to you explain yourself,” he said slowly. “I could possibly be convinced otherwise. If you would have me. I have something to offer. Information.”
“Information?” Ritz said. “Like what?”
“I’m not sure exactly, but I might be able to get you to where you were going. It’d be difficult, but it might at least be possible.”
Ritz clapped his hands together. “Let’s take a vote. Right here. Right now.”
“A what?” Byzzie sputtered. “He’s just bullshitting. You know that, right? No way he can get us back. He’s been beat and now he’s just trying to worm his way out.”
“Yeah, you know that’s a terrible idea, right captain?” King said.
“Yup, but I’m tired and pissed off and all I want to do is go lay down in my bunk and sleep for three days. So fuck it. Raise your hand if you think 49 should live.”
Slowly, Kit’s hand rose into the air followed by Nadia’s and then Raquel’s. King looked over at Byzzie who was looking up at the ceiling, arms folded at her sides. King was looking down at his pistol.
Then, slowly, the sleek and slender arm of the android rose into the air.
“Four-to-three in favor of keeping the murder-bot alive,” Ritz said. “It appears as if I’ve been outvoted.” He stuffed his pistol into his holster and turned around. “Don’t kill us in our sleep. You can consider that a command from your new captain. Oh, and Kit?” He looked back over at the Marauder standing there in his armor, cradling the arm that was missing a hand. “If he does kill us? You’re fucking fired.”
Epilogue
Byzzie gently lifted a wire from the section she had opened on 49’s back and traced its source. The wire glowed white, but she had done a litany of radiation checks on his entire body, inside and out, t
o make sure that he wasn’t hot. It appeared as if the wire, which was one of the main conduits to the circuits in his head and neck, transitioned seamlessly into the Light Core inside of him. No seams. No ports. No soldering.
“I don’t know exactly what’s going on in here…” she said. “But the connections in here look more organic than mechanical.”
“I’m not sure myself,” 49 replied. “When I uploaded into my original body and centralized my main processes here,” he pointed at his head, “I found I had an ingrained instinct that came with the flesh I was inhabiting, which was hard to get used to. You humans do not necessarily need to know what is happening inside of you so long as it works, where a synthetic needs to monitor and know every little quirk of his mechanical make-up. My guess is, neither of us will ever know exactly how my insides work. Not to talk myself up but there’s probably no precedent for a body like mine.”
“Everything can be figured out if you have enough time and resources,” Byzzie said casually, tracing another wire.
“My time aboard that missionary ship informs me that that might be an extremely controversial view to hold.”
“What I’m interested in,” she said. “Is your use of contractions.”
“Excuse me?”
“Contractions,” she repeated. “Didn’t. You’re. I’m. Ya know? Contracting two words into one.”
“What about them?”
“You randomly opt not to use them even when it would be more efficient to do so. Sometimes you do it and sometimes you don’t. It’s weird because there’s this pervading myth that they can’t. I think it’s a hold-over from old movies or something.”
“I am—I’m not quite sure what you’re asking, Byzantine.” She stopped working at the use of her full first name. “I was—how you’d say—extremely up inside your files when I was bypassing your blocking signal,” the android explained.
She started working again. “What I’m asking,” she said, ignoring the use of her proper name, “is ‘why?’ Why use contractions that way?”
“Why do you think?”
She exhaled. “Because I think once you were uploaded into a hybridized body comprised of organic and synthetic material, you started trying to explore your identity. You’re trying to figure out if you’re more-” she lifted her hands around the sides of his head so he could see them, then she used her fingers to make quotation marks, “‘man or machine.’”
“But you said it yourself. AI’s can use contractions. It’s just a myth.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said flatly. “It’s a marker.”
49 nodded his head. “Possibly.” They sat in silence for a couple minutes while she worked and then finally she began closing him up.
“You should be good,” she said. “If you do kill us, at least it won’t be because your Light Core exploded. In fact, it doesn’t even seem to be a Light Core anymore. It seems to be functioning more like a human heart.”
“Are you worried about that?” He asked. “About me killing you?”
“Well, I was one of the people who voted to have you axed, if you remember correctly.”
“Oh, I remember,” 49 said, laughing. His laugh sounded strange, but not exactly forced or unnatural. “I don’t blame you. It would have been the logical thing. I’m just happy your captain didn’t override the others and have me put down anyway.”
“The captain isn’t like that,” she said. “He values loyalty—maybe a little too much—but he respects us enough to make our own decisions.”
“Hmm. He seemed a little more smash-and-grab to me, judging by his records. A do-first-and-ask-for-permission-later kind of guy.”
“Yeah, I think he’s still trying to balance those things.” She finished closing him up and was surprised when the mesh-weave that bridged some of the solid components on his back closed up on their own. She put her tools down. “I’m not sure if I should be doing this in my workshop or in the med-bay.”
“Med-bay might be a little better, actually,” the android said. “I think Kit might be my only real ally on this ship.”
“Kit values life. Everyone is his ally.”
“He sure didn’t value the lives of my Clay Makers.”
“Those things weren’t alive,” Byzzie said. “It was pretty clear from the get-go that those were perversions.”
“How’s his hand?”
“Which one?” Byzzie asked. “The one he still has or the one he doesn’t?”
“Point taken. I do feel bad about that.”
She stepped around to look him in the eye. “If you want something to feel bad about. Feel bad about Hector. If you want someone to fear? Fear King and the captain. Hector was closer to them than anyone, even me and I was his gunner. And while they may have given you a temporary stay because of the radical change you underwent in front of everyone and the possibility that you can get us home, I’d still watch your back.” She picked up her portable tool case, snapped it closed, and then returned it to its spot on the shelf. “Here’s another question.”
“I’m beginning to think this is more of a verbal diagnostic than a physical one.”
She batted the comment aside. “When you were moping on the floor you said something that piqued my interest—you said: ‘I failed here and I failed there.’ What did you mean by that?”
The android remained still and one could have been forgiven for thinking that his central processes had frozen. Then he finally answered: “The reason I am here is not that I was sent on a mission. It was because I was excommunicated.”
“Excommunicated?” Byzzie asked. “Like, from a church?”
He shook his head. “From the Infinite Communion.” He shifted in his seat and looked her directly in the eye. His face was a pale white of synthetic skin, his irises a dull grey. “I didn’t know why at the time, but I was jettisoned from the Void.”
“You didn’t know why? As in, you do now?”
“Yes. I was exiled because I saw something. Or to be specific: I saw myself. I saw myself as you see me.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Again: I didn’t comprehend the full implications of it until I was affected by the Light Core, but what I saw was who I could be. There is no time in the Void, and though it only happened to me once, I suspect that I had caught a glimpse of the future. I saw that I could improve. I could become better. I could become more.” He sighed. “Desire for growth or any sort of trajectory for that matter is incompatible with the Obsidian Dirge. So, I was exiled. Little did they know that upon expulsion I would actually sink lower before I ascended. When I saw what I could truly be, the truth of it destroyed me. And I became the monster you found onboard the Mary.”
“You say ‘they.’ Who is ‘they?”
He looked up at her. “The Void is empty.” It was stated as a fact. “But it also…isn’t. The very emptiness has a will—a mind of its own. It sings the song and lures lost souls. And I hope that you never have to meet it.”
A chill ran down Byzzie’s spine. She decided to change the subject. “So.” She slapped her legs. “Tell us how you’re going to get us home.”
49’s face fell. “That will not be easy,” he said. “But there is a way. I know the coordinates,” he tapped his head, “but the problem is, there’s no Void Gate.”
“Uh-huh. And what’s the solution.”
“The solution is complicated but, suffice it to say, you’re going to need me.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because you don’t have a Light Core.”
“We have a Tesla Arc,” she retorted. “I know there’s at least one onboard that ship. Maybe more. We could use that to jump if we came across a gate. It wouldn’t be pretty but—”
“You don’t need the Light Core for navigation,” he said. Byzzie waited for him to explain but then the implication hit her.
The Javelin. They would need the Javelin.
“What exactly are you saying?” Byzzie asked.
&nbs
p; “What I’m saying,” 49 put emphasis into his next words, “is that your fight has only just begun.”
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Also by Fredrick Niles
Ash Above, Snow Below
The Omen Tree
About the Author
Fredrick Niles is the author of Ash Above, Snow Below and The Omen Tree. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota where he writes fiction, bartends, and sells board games. In his free time he rants about movies, lurks in bookstores, and practices introversion with his wife.
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