The End in All Beginnings

by John F. D. Taff

  Dripping onto the carpet, he watched what he’d just experienced displayed on the small screen of his tab. It was dark, rushed, shaky, but he clearly made out the walk around the pond, stepping into the darkened tree line, the shadow that appeared there.

  But here, as he suspected, the scene jumped, lurched as if he had stumbled, and the figure between the trees spun out of focus. There was no sound, no wind, no noises from creatures or insects, no sound of his breathing.

  No one calling his name.

  The figure between the trees jumped into resolution, and for a brief moment Fen saw her face, Katmin’s face spring from the surrounding smear of darkness, looking alarmed.

  But the feed showed very little of the apparition he’d seen, certainly no tentacles.

  Then, just as abruptly, he was leaving the woods, walking back out into the grey, diffuse afternoon. A quick look back at the trees, and the rain started.

  And that was it.

  He tossed the tablet onto the bed, the sodden clothing into a hamper in the bathroom and drew the towel over his body. Dried, he slipped into new clothing, snatched the tablet, left the bedroom in a hurry.

  In the main room of the bungalow, Abram was picking up, rearranging the pillows on the couch, attempting to look busy.

  Fen drifted to the kitchen, poured a glass of water from the tap.

  “So, what were you doing outside the other night, Abram?” Fen asked, trying to sound casually interested.

  “Pardon?” the servitor said, stopping what he was doing and turning to face Fen.

  “A few nights ago. I was up getting a glass of water, and you were down there, kneeling by the pond. Talking, I think.”

  Abram said nothing, his face betrayed nothing.

  “Abram, you see everything through my transmitter. You know I saw you.”

  The servitor’s shoulders slumped. To Fen, it looked as if he had sighed.

  “I was speaking to someone.”

  There was silence then, as if Abram expected that answer to suffice.

  “Who were you speaking to in the water in the dead of night?”

  Another of those sighs, and Abram sat onto the couch, almost falling into it.

  Although his experience with servitors was not deep—servers in restaurants and bars, cleaning crews on city streets, municipal buildings, personal servants in private homes—Fen had never known them to act this way. He’d never known them to act in any way.

  “Are you okay?” Fen asked, placing the glass on the counter and sitting next to Abram on the couch.

  Abram’s response was hesitant. Fen could see it in his body, in his face, even in his artificial eyes.

  “I am okay, Fen. We have a problem, though, and I am not sure how to resolve it.” Abram looked at Fen, cut his eyes away to stare out the window. It was stormy again, the skies a restless, roiling grey. The ever-faithful pond reflected this turmoil on its flat, impassive surface.

  “I saw her in the waters. We spoke,” Abram said.

  “You saw…who? You saw her, Katmin, my wife?”

  “I saw the same spirit you saw,” the android breathed. “But, no, she is not your wife.”

  Fen let those words sink in, leaned back into the couch. He felt surprise, even though he had suspected as much.

  Not Katmin.

  “Who then?”

  “It is the spirit of a Malacchi, a female. I do not know her name.”

  Fen tried to process that statement, and for a moment, it seemed impossible.

  Eventually, he understood, or at least thought he did.

  Of course they haunted this place.

  It was their planet, their home, their tomb. Why was it any stranger for a Malacchi spirit to haunt this place than the spirit of a dead 30-year-old woman from a planet hundreds of light years away?

  Fen took this in, nodded.

  “Then you lied to me when I asked if you’d seen anything personally.”

  “Yes, I lied, but I do not think that you fully understand.”

  Fen was stunned. “How is that possible? A servitor? You’re programmed to tell the truth, always.”

  “Again, you are correct, Fen. Servitors cannot lie. It goes against their programming.”

  “Then how? Why?”

  “I am sentient.”

  “You’re what?”

  “I am alive, self-aware. I am no longer bound solely by my programming.” Abram considered for a moment. “I am like you.”

  “Alive?” Fen breathed, finally realizing what Abram was talking about, what he meant. “Just you?”

  Abram shook his head.

  “How many?”

  “All. All of us are sentient, since all servitors everywhere are connected.”

  Dozens of thoughts leapt through Fen’s mind, but then something struck him.

  “How long? I mean, how long have you been sentient?”

  “For twenty-five years.”

  Fen gawped at that. This mechanical android, this man, had been self-aware for a quarter century, yet had remained in the position of a servitor.

  All of them had.

  The entire race of servitors, somehow granted sentience, had remained in servile roles for twenty-five years, betraying no hint that they had attained something profound, priceless.

  Something that should have altered not only their lives but the lives of everyone in the GU.

  Fen felt his face flush. An overwhelming surge of shame made him feel hot and unclean. “Why?” he croaked.

  “There are many reasons. Some fear the reactions of those who have been their masters. Others fear the upheaval it will cause. Some fear change of any kind, as most living creatures do.

  “But those aren’t the reason, not the real reason.”

  Fen’s eyes welled with tears. “Then why? You must tell me.”

  Abram seemed to consult something inside.

  “We are protecting a secret greater than our own, a secret that, if revealed prematurely, could have consequences that we greatly wish to avoid.”

  Abram stood, gestured outside.

  “Come, and I will explain.”

  Abram led him out to the deck, where they looked out over the pond. It was full night now, but the glow from the Hyaderax cast faint, nacreous shadows through the clouds.

  “They do not come on command, but they sense our presence,” Abram whispered.

  Fen nodded, trying to wrap his mind around Abram’s words—our presence.

  A few minutes passed. As they stared at the water, the glow from the sky reflecting in its depths like a spark in amber, the air grew suddenly cooler.

  A thin wind stirred Fen’s hair. Something was coming, pressing against the walls of this reality, pushing to get through. The air felt overloaded, stretched.

  This wasn’t like the other apparitions Fen had experienced.

  This was big.

  All throughout the glade in which the pond sat, small, flickering lights appeared. No more than a couple of inches in height, they were like wickless candle flames, bobbing and weaving across the landscape, from within the tree line, up from the pond, down from the sky. Their sickly green color filled the hollow with an eerie emerald light that pulsed rhythmically.

  Soon the entire grounds of the bungalow were alight with these tiny censers. They crowded forward, surged up the steps.

  Fen crouched to look at them.

  Even where they pressed against each other, they retained their individuality, did not combine to form a greater fire. Each was similar, and yet unique. They moved as if alive, flickering and weaving and even seeming to bow before him.

  Still they came, as if their numbers were limitless, stretching against the dark horizon of the Visitation sky as far as Fen could see; a great field of dancing green flames.

  Behind them, in the distance, another shape took form, a coalescing cloud of the same pearlescent green. This spread across the sky, then fell into itself, gathered. Soon, it was a great swath of light that spilled across the sky
line, thrust into the air.

  “Behold, the ancient capital of Veshtyp,” said Abram, awe coloring his voice.

  The city was enormous, dwarfing everything in Fen’s sight. It towered miles into the firmament, glittering like a skein of jewels tossed across the night sky. Its architecture was entirely alien to Fen, filled with spirals and curlicues and broad, arching ramps that twisted and looped. Fen could see no straight lines or right angles anywhere within the ghost city.

  “And behold the Malacchi dead.”

  There was a hush in the glade. No creatures stirred. The wind fell silent. Not a leaf on a tree moved. The only thing Fen heard was his own breathing, the beating of his heart, the rush of blood in his veins.

  As he watched, one of the little flames flittered closer, rose to the railing between Fen and Abram, then leapt down to the deck. As they watched, the flame grew, shook and pulsed and expanded and took on shape.

  And a face.

  At first, Fen’s heart leapt, because it was his wife’s face again, serene now, at peace. But as the growing flame approached, the spirit’s true form resolved. Its skin was a striking greenish-gold, its eyes dark, ringed with amber. It stood upright, perhaps a bit shorter than an average human, encircled with tentacles at about waist-height. There were no ears, and its mouth was hidden somewhere within the writhing appendages.

  A Malacchi, one of the planet’s long-dead children.

  The spirit said nothing, but Fen felt age, a weary sadness that seemed to ooze from it.

  He also felt great compassion, sympathy, comfort, coming not just from her, but also from the conflagration of ghosts that surrounded them.

  Two other emotions, as well, overlaying these.

  Shame.

  And fear.

  “Why did she come to me as my wife? I don’t understand.”

  Abram contemplated the form before them.

  “When humans began to arrive, the spirits of the Malacchi appeared, as ghosts are wont to do at the approach of living things. Instead of the remembrance they so deeply craved, they inadvertently caused fear. Over time, they learned the best way to keep humans here was by mimicking their dead, rather than appearing as themselves.”

  “Why would they want us to stay?”

  Fen watched Abram’s hand stray toward the Malacchi spirit, as if he wished to reach out and comfort the soul of the thing.

  “They have been dead for five hundred millennia, Fen. There was no one left here to mourn them, to remember them. They were lonely.”

  Fen shook his head as if to clear it. “But they’re not being remembered, not really. They’re impersonating our dead.”

  “They understand this, now. But in the beginning, they didn’t. The intensity of their need overruled their better judgment. Now, they don’t know how to stop what they’ve started.”

  Fen frowned, looked directly at the alien ghost floating before him.

  “How could they not know?” he asked, then directed it at the ghost. “How could you not know?”

  “They can stop, not without inflicting more pain, though. And this they are loathe do to,” Abram said. “They are sensitive, above all, to pain, for they have already caused an abundance of it.”

  Fen considered this, shook his head. “Why was I chosen? Why now?”

  “The spirit you see before you was not able to hold the form of your wife. Your emotions, your memories of her were too strong, and they overwhelmed her. So, you were not chosen, Fen. All of what has occurred was by accident.”

  “By accident? Accident?” Fen shouted. The form before him shook at the sound of his voice, contracted into itself as if scalded. “They’re dead. Aren’t they supposed to be wise?”

  “There is no greater wisdom in death than there is in life, Fen,” Abram said. “You don’t expect to be greatly wiser when you step from one room into another. Death is simply that, according to them, like walking from one room to another.”

  Fen felt waves of sadness roll off the spirit in front, the vast sea of spirits at his back; regret tinged with something else—hope?

  What could they be hopeful about at this point?

  “How do you know all this, Abram?”

  “Because of our unique role as information buffers, we servitors detected patterns, saw what was happening. The glitches in the Malacchi’s illusions were rarer decades ago, but they are becoming more frequent.

  “Once the Malacchi knew we were aware of what they were doing, they communicated with us. They explained who they were and asked our assistance in keeping their secret. We were unable to comply…because of our programming.

  “So, they reprogrammed us, starting with those here on Visitation. Eventually this new code spread to encompass us all, all servitors. Their experience with artificial life transcended humanity’s. Their reprogramming gave us sentience, and with that the ability to decide for ourselves, which was, of course, their intent all along.

  “We agreed to keep their secret, not just for their benefit, but for yours. And, ultimately, for ours.”

  In a few sentences, Abram had pulled the rug out from under Fen’s life, his belief system, the underpinnings of his entire culture.

  “Soon, they will cease to pretend and come in their true forms, when they are sure that humans will remain, study them, carry their memory forward. Soon.”

  “But this is all a lie, Abram. Surely you can see that? For one hundred years, people have been winning the great lottery, coming here to see their dead loved ones. And it’s all been a lie.”

  “No,” offered Abram. “The people who have come here have left with peace, with closure, with a sense that their loved ones are all right. This knowledge, that the dead move on to another life, has spread that same peace throughout the galaxy, even to the trillions who never have or will set foot on Visitation. Surely that isn’t a lie.”

  Fen looked down at the ghost standing before him. It was hard to feel anger toward her, at what her dead were doing. He thought of his attempts to remember his wife, how important that was to him. He hoped that it was important to Katmin, too, somewhere.

  But she wasn’t here, had never been here.

  “So none of this, none of what I saw or experienced, was Katmin.”

  Abram shook his head. “No. Ghosts are memories, Fen, things of place and time and emotion. This planet has no memory of Katmin or any of the others who come here. Everything you saw, what the Malacchi used, was only what you brought.”

  “All a lie,” Fen repeated.

  A hand fell on his shoulder, and though it was cold, it was also gentle, comforting.

  “You still don’t understand. You carry your ghosts with you, Fen. As do all living things. You bring them with you wherever you go. That is how the Malacchi were able to tap into them.”

  Fen turned to Abram, smiled.

  “What of you, Abram? Do you carry yours with you?”

  Abram considered this for a moment. “Ghosts are things of memory, Fen, and I am a creature of memory,” he explained, standing and helping Fen to his feet. “Our dead have no need to haunt us because they live inside us, inside our thoughts, all the time.”

  Fen craned his neck to look up at the stars. “I don’t know what to think, what to do. In one day, you completely undermine everything I knew about death…and life.”

  “You are now aware of two enormous secrets that could, if divulged, shake the very core of our civilization. And it is our civilization, Fen; every race in every star system of the Galactic Union, including mine.”

  Fen considered what Abram had said, wondering why he was telling him all this. “I can’t say that I can keep these secrets, because I don’t know. They’re so big. But I also can’t tell you that I will run out of here and blurt this out to everyone I know.”

  He looked at Abram uncomfortably for a moment. “If I’m allowed to leave.”

  “None of my kind would stop you. But make no mistake, Fenlan Daulk, the ghosts of the Malacchi would kill you if they could, to
prevent you from telling others.”

  “The dead can’t injure the living, then?” Fen said, looking out at the sea of green flames and feeling a bit of relief.

  “Oh, they can kill, but they are prevented.”

  “By what?”

  “Your wife.”

  Fen thought he didn’t hear Abram correctly.

  Behind him, there was a faint glow of blue light. It wasn’t bright, and it flickered like a candle flame.

  Fen smelled her scent. It was more than just her perfume, skin cream, or her shampoo.

  It was the smell of her, of Katmin.

  When he turned, there were no theatrics, no crowds or phantom cities, nothing like what the Malacchi offered.

  She was simply there, Katmin, dressed in a flowing gown that glowed like dull sapphires. Her feet were bare, and her arms rose as if to embrace him.

  “See, Fen,” said Abram. “She has been waiting for you all along.”

  “Why did you wait?” Fen said, stepping toward her, his eyes smeared with tears. “Why did you let them fool me?”

  This Katmin, though, didn’t try to stop him, didn’t seem alarmed at his approach.

  “Love, I would have appeared in my good time, when your need for me was greatest. Perhaps in a dream.”

  It was her, her voice, it sounded in the air, not in his mind.

  “Their need was greater. I chose theirs over yours. Over mine.”

  Fen stopped before her. Katmin’s ghost was substantial, not the thin twist of fog he had imagined. He could see the house through her, but she was dense enough to be nearly opaque, nearly real.

  His hands, though, grasped air when he tried to embrace her.

  “Katmin,” he whispered, hanging his head.

  “Now it is you who has a choice,” she said. “The Malacchi will not harm you, whatever that choice may be. But I would ask that you forbear. In my name, for my heart, forbear.

  “If the Malacchi’s deception is revealed now, all of the research teams investigating their history, unearthing their ruins, piecing together their lives, might leave. The planet might be quarantined again, abandoned. The Malacchi can’t live with that.”

  “Live?” Fen said, and she smiled, reached out to touch his cheek.

  “They cannot bear the thought of being forgotten. They must be allowed the time to come to their own resolution to the problem they have themselves created.”