Remember the Starfighter

by Michael Kan

  Julian opened his eyes, clamping his hands down on the side of the table in near panic. He looked across the room and found the specialist on the other operating table. “Alysdeon,” he said, imagining how many others had fallen to the enemy’s influence. Like him, they all had become victims.

  “We need to leave here as soon as possible,” he said.

  ***

  She heard the crash come from the other end of his quarters, the glass breaking on the floor.

  Arendi looked down and saw Julian staring at the mess. He had accidentally dropped the cup, the impact cracking it in two. A puddle had now formed on the floor, the tea spilling out.

  He groaned, kneeling down to wipe it with a napkin.

  As Julian finished cleaning the floor, Arendi moved past him. She prepared another cup on the table in his room, and poured out the brewed tea into a separate flask.

  She handed it to him, the water steaming from the container. He nodded in a thanks, and took a sip.

  “So,” he said. “Is it really you?”

  Julian placed the cup on the table, and fell back into a nearby chair. “Am I really speaking to the real Arendi?”

  He smirked, already knowing the answer. This Arendi was not the machine he had encountered a day ago. She brushed her hair back, answering, still too shy to look at him directly.

  “Yes,” she replied. “I am here.”

  “Then you’re back... Or is this just goodbye?”

  Afraid of what she might say, Julian looked off at the window in his room. Arendi, meanwhile, felt the sting.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I apologize for what happened.”

  She closed her eyes, regretting the way it had unfolded. The creator wielding her body like a puppet.

  Julian tried to sympathize. He cut into her pause with another smile.

  “Servetus. Your creator,” he remarked. “The heartless A.I...”

  Although tired and pausing between each breath, Julian spoke seriously, putting weight on every statement he made.

  “He’s different than you, isn’t he? Emotionless. They all are. Probably programmed with set directives. I bet they were all just helper bots and A.I. before all this happened.”

  Julian was right. Even Servetus didn’t have much of a personality. Not in the human sense, his operations all geared to “serve.” It gave him an almost slavish devotion to the mission, at times disregarding any so-called secondary or irrelevant needs.

  “Heartless” Julian had said. Perhaps it was an accurate description.

  “Yes,” she replied. “But he is my creator. I must follow his wishes.”

  “But what about you? What do you want? Is he the one forcing you to...disappear?”

  “I’m not disappearing Julian. I will be stored in the Elion’s databanks. But my mission is accomplished. There is no need for an artificial human. No need for an imperfect replica. Not when real humans exist.”

  “You didn’t really answer my question,” he said. “Don’t you want to stay? With us?”

  She clenched her teeth.

  “Julian... It doesn’t matter. I’m not alive. I’m just a machine.”

  “But you’re not. You’re sentient. You must be.”

  “It’s a simulated sentience. Not real.”

  “No. I don’t believe that.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You don’t understand. I don’t... I didn’t want this.”

  The sadness was evident in her face. Her eyes were wide and searching.

  Arendi felt her neck, wondering how she could effectively explain. So she was blunt. “I didn’t want to be human. I didn’t want these flaws. These emotions.”

  “You don’t know what its like,” she added, as her voice began to crack. “To not be able to control them. You don’t know what the emotions did to me... ”

  But Julian did. He had seen the logs.

  “Miya,” he said. “She’s not your sister. She was you.”

  Arendi didn’t move. She could only clench her fists in shame, wishing that the logs had been erased, and left forgotten.

  “The experiments...” Julian went on, pressing the matter delicately. “I saw what happened. The pain. It—”

  “I went insane,” she said, interrupting. “I wanted to die.”

  Arendi gave a deep exhale, angry. She looked at Julian, sitting comfortably in his chair.

  “I felt so weak. So pathetic. I’m flawed.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I... you don’t understand. The emotions. The pain,” Arendi said, grinding her teeth. “Why did I need to feel it? Why did I need to be human? My existence is unnatural.”

  She stared at him, like she was hoping for an answer. But Julian was only at a loss for words.

  “Arendi...”he said softly. “I’m sorry. I—”

  She raised her hand, stopping him. “For a time, I hated humanity. I hated to be like you. It made no sense... So I begged Servetus to stop. I don’t want your weakness.”

  Closing her eyes, she then nearly yelled.

  “Why do you even care, Julian? This doesn’t concern you.”

  She turned away from him, both frustrated and embarrassed. “You wouldn’t understand,” she muttered again, crossing her shoulders, and feeling the humiliation in her skin. She was tired of this.

  Arendi was about to leave the room, when Julian rose from his chair.

  “You’re right. I don’t know what it’s like to be an android,” he said. “But I know that feeling... I know it. Because I did it.”

  He came to her side, running his hand through his hair in anxiety, but still willing to admit it.

  “I killed myself too.”

  Julian was about to go on. To talk about how far-reaching the depression could be. That it was not easy to understand, or even broach it, and yet it was still very real.

  Instead, Julian merely rubbed the side of arm, his posture turning cold and shriveling to the admission.

  “Yeah,” he went on. “Even after it happened, I still thought about it. Thought about doing it again. That’s how crazy it can be.”

  He stopped, finding himself held back. Suddenly, he thought of it, the weapon in his hand.

  Four years ago, the laser repair pistol had been pointed to his head. The trigger at his finger. And then the bang. He pressed a hand against his nose, feeling the memories swell.

  “Shit,” he said, dejected. “Yeah. I know.”

  Julian retreated back further into his quarters, returning to the cup of tea at the table. He looked at the wall, not sure what else to do.

  “I guess I remember it,” he said, randomly thinking back. “When I was still with the Core. I also thought that too. That I’m supposed to be a starfighter. An instrument of destruction. Why do I need to feel? What’s the point?”

  “In the end, the emotions did kill me,” he added. “But it was just a mistake. I know that now. At least I was given another chance.”

  Julian could easily shower Arendi with plenty of positive statements. He had learned so many of them three years ago during his psychological rehabilitation back on Haven. But as always, it was easier said than done. There was simply no logic to it; the shortcut to salvation was just an illusion.

  “I really wish I could tell you something Arendi. To fix it all,” he said. “But I... Sometimes, even I have trouble keeping it together... I wish I had been stronger.”

  He drank another sip from his tea, and placed it down on the table. He then glanced at Arendi, confident in what he would say next.

  “All I know is I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you. I’m sure Alysdeon would agree. Without you, this mission would have never happened. We’d be lost. Never knowing that we could save my homeworld.”

  Julian smiled. “We’re all imperfect Arendi,” he added. “Even Servetus isn’t infallible.”

  Hearing those words, Arendi looked off, and toward the window in the room. It was the same sight that had never changed since her conception. Tha
t of the Endervar gateway and its alien energies swirling in every direction.

  For a time, it seemed the universe had nothing more to offer. To be trapped on a derelict vessel with no one else. Only in recent months, had Arendi learned that she had been wrong. That, indeed, there was much more. So much more.

  “The pain,” she said. “What you saw in the logs. I actually don’t have personal memories of it.”

  “Whenever a version of myself was deemed a failure,” Arendi explained. “Then the memory was wiped and Servetus would begin anew. A clean slate, but with modifications targeted at specific improvements.”

  “But I’ve seen logs,” she added. “And I ... even with all the modifications...I... I still don’t know. Sometimes, nothing makes sense.”

  Arendi turned silent. The logic had no bearing here. She simply felt it, the emotions beating inside.

  How cruel it had all been, the experiments trying to replicate the sensation of pain. She felt her abdomen, and where some of it had once came. The power source was no longer there, and for that she was thankful.

  “Servetus...” she said, before trailing off. So heartless.

  In another moment, she would leave his quarters, undecided and somewhat shaken. Was he right? Was she more than just a machine? Or was it all a misguided human fantasy?

  She returned to the Elion, Servetus calling to her with a stream of commands, and trying to analyze her defiance.

  However, before she re-entered the ship, she noticed her reflection in the glass of the landing bridge corridor.

  It was faint, but her face was there in the translucent wall. For a long time, she had been too ashamed to look at it, too easily reminded of the wounds littered over her previous body. But Arendi didn’t see that anymore. Only herself as she wanted to be.

  “Listen,” Julian had said in that last moment before she left. “I just think the choice should be yours. I guess...I worried. I don’t want to lose anymore friends.”

  “Like you once told me before. I was lucky to have met you.”

  Chapter 55

  “Why are you here?” Julian asked. “And what do you want?”

  He kept circling back to the question, as he paced across the bridge, looking out into the view screen. Even though his sights were set on the surrounding anomaly, Julian could only think about what he had seen in his sleep. It chafed in his mind, the imprint of the visions still repeating across his thoughts.

  His hand.

  An orange flower.

  The stars in their multitude.

  And then the universe. All merging. Coming back together. Into one point. What did it mean?

  Never before had communication been established with the enemy; the Endervars were simply incapable, or had no interest in chatting. Instead, they had made their intentions clear with every successive invasion, destroying whatever resistance to lay claim to their prize.

  Sentient life. For whatever reason, the Endervars craved it.

  Julian thought back to all the theories, and that the Endervars were perhaps terraforming the galaxy. Anyone trapped behind the enemy barrier would be killed off by the radiation from the shield, or die with no access to sunlight.

  Others, however, were more bold. They believed that the enemy was, in fact, a higher power. One bent on uplifting all life to the next existence.

  Whether they should be welcomed or resisted, had just been part of the long-running debates surrounding the Endervars. Even religious movements had come about, proclaiming the so-called “visitors” to be an ancient god come back.

  Julian could only wonder. “Why keep us alive?” he asked in a whisper. “Why preserve us?”

  He was here at the center of the enemy gateway. But outside was still a world flourishing with life. 11 billion humans, all trapped, but safely, behind the enemy barrier.

  Even with the Endervar shield, sunlight and warmth were still reaching the planet, keeping its eco-system and atmosphere whole.

  The only hint behind the enemy’s motives had come from the visions. The dreams. Inside his mind, Julian had caught not just a glimpse, but a lasting sequence of images, the origin of which had come from the Endervars.

  The hand.

  The flower.

  The galaxy.

  Shrinking and condensing. The sequence repeating. Almost involuntarily, he saw them, only to shake his head, and breathe in deep.

  If it was a message, then it was ominous one. And yet, he had wanted to see it. Through their power, the Endervars had compelled him to imagine it, the feeling closer to possession, than any form of communication.

  Exhausted, Julian lay his two hands on a railing and squeezed, hoping the images would just fade. He did not want to sleep. Rather, he stood on the bridge, checking the scans.

  ALERT: VECTOR 1-45-6. INCOMING OBJECT.

  Although he had initially feared it was an enemy ship, the Au-O’sanah’s still functioning computer had showed it to be a much smaller object, closer to the size of a personal shuttle. The matter analysis registered no typical Endervar energy signatures, but just a shell of metal, propelled by the pulse of a laser.

  The object finally came within visual range, the little craft emerging above the Au-O’sanah. It cruised along, ready to dock back with its mothership, the Elion.

  As the vessel began its descent, Julian noticed what had to be refits across the hull. The unmanned vehicle barely resembled its original form, shedding off its smoothed exterior for a jumble of sensory equipment, and two robotic arms.

  Julian knew what this was. Arendi had briefed him about it, the craft a surgical tool of sorts. Blinking in a crown of red and blue lights, the unmanned vehicle had just returned from the fringes of the void. Its purpose: to search for and contain the precious alien matter that the Endervar gateway so constantly generated.

  For centuries and millennia it had done this, stockpiling away the bits of exotic material it could extract. Only within the gateway, could the craft achieve this — the area approachable and still oozing with traces of Endervar matter.

  To maintain the vessel, it had been rebuilt with salvaged debris and parts from the Elion, including what had been its last remaining engine. Back and forth, the vehicle went, the A.I. known as Servetus controlling it remotely.

  Julian breathed a sigh of relief, thinking everything was normal.

  ALERT: VECTOR 8-25-1. COMM-SIGNAL DETECTED.

  Off in the other corner of the anomaly was the disturbance. The view screen panned to show that the wall of energy surrounding the void began to erupt. On the other end, he could see it. The open sky of Earth.

  For the entire span of a minute, a circular tunnel pierced its way past the gateway, and out into atmosphere. He saw the Endervar energy churn around the channel, before it disappeared, the wall reforming as if nothing had happened.

  The scans had also picked up the change. But it was more than just an opening. Through the tunnel came the data stream, the communications both public and encrypted, beaming between both the Elion, and the outside world.

  THIS IS EARTHFORCE. ARE YOU THERE? CAN YOU READ THIS ELION?

  In that moment, the surrounding communication interference had been lifted. And with it, contact between Earth, however brief, had been re-established.

  Julian then received the other alert. He looked to his communication band, and saw that the message was from Arendi. Or what he hoped was actually her.

  The technology to break the shield had been completed, she signaled. Now it was time to retrieve it.

  ***

  He didn’t recognize her at first. She had abandoned all her clothing and gone back to her earlier form — that of a woman, surrounded in machine, the suit of armor now solid.

  It was the same as before, the silver metal sleek, but hard and certainly more alloy than fabric. She was inside the Elion’s mainframe room, her arms akimbo. A spider-bot stood perched on her shoulder, while another was on her leg, each one completing a set of modifications.

  There wa
s no face, only the armor. It covered the entire head, the human features exchanged for plates of metal.

  Julian didn’t know what to say. Was this Arendi? Or was this just Servetus having taken full control?

  The armor around the face receded, as the two spider-bots crawled down the body and onto the floor. The nano-suit then began to move. It pulled away the sheets of metal, stopping at the neck and the ears.

  Arendi shook her head, the black hair tossing, as she brushed it back. “Are you feeling better?” she asked.

  It wasn’t Servetus as he had feared; it was her, even as she stood absolutely still. The rest of her body seemed heavy, and immobile, but her face remained active and alive.

  “Yeah, a little bit,” Julian replied. “And you? Back to your old self?”

  She smiled, and looked across her two stationary arms, the gleaming metal wrapped around them.

  “Actually, an important modification was made.”

  She raised her left arm, and flashed the object at her wrist. A circular lens was attached, the edges plated, but the center shinning in a glistening darkness. It was the enemy’s power, but contained behind a large arm-band that stretched to the elbow.

  Arendi then planted both her arms down at the side. All of the armor began pulling back, the nano-machines stretching apart, and releasing her body from the tight embrace.

  With the armor still standing, but behind her, Arendi walked out free, clothed in her black and white Hegemony uniform.

  “I saw it,” Julian said. “The opening in the anomaly. Just minutes ago.”

  “Yes,” Arendi replied. “I opened it.”

  She held the side of her wrist with her other hand, and grinned.

  “Servetus wanted to attempt contact with EarthForce. It seems there’s another ship outside the gateway, several hundred kilometers away.”

  “Did it work?”

  “It seems so. It was only brief, but we’ve sent off all our data back to the Science Foundation, hoping it will be of use.”