An End tst-2

by Paul Evan Hughes

  Whistler was surprisingly polite.

  There was nothing we could do. The corvette docked. We met them in the hangar. Berard, his officers, myself. Lilith stayed in the sick bay.

  Seeing Seven wasn’t like looking into a mirror.

  Hello, Hunter.

  I remember a print of a painting. Not the mother, as everyone knows, but the mistress, although I didn’t know it at the time. Animal rug. Wolf? White dress, white girl. She looked so sad. Eyes empty like

  Whistler held his hand out to shake mine. I didn’t accept. He grinned and let his arm fall to his side.

  He explained that Seven would be my replacement. I wasn’t to be killed, but sent away. I hadn’t expected that. He asked where Lilith was and I said that she was hidden on another galleon, although I knew he could feel her, knew that he would find her.

  The destroyers outside opened fire and took out one of Berard’s other two galleons.

  Still hidden?

  They directed me to the corvette, took me outside to the waiting surprise that had arrived in-system. Something big. I felt Lilith’s touch, her fear, her desperation. I tried to reassure her but couldn’t. I didn’t know how long it would be before I saw her again, if ever. Tried to reassure myself but couldn’t. Just tried to stop thinking, the dead painter on one side, the ghost of myself on the other, draped in black, eyes cold and

  It arrived with a silent fanfare, a machine the size of a solar system, something special Mother had created just for me when she realized what I was doing, when she realized that I had a little more resistance than my father, that I had thrown her jihad off-track if even for a little while. There it was: Machine, and it scared the hell out of me.

  Too tired to fight, to weak to resist. The silver onset had done more than ravage my body.

  please don’t let this

  They’d take Lilith from Berard’s ship and place her on another destroyer. Seven would become me. He would ensure that the jihad moved forward, ever forward, spreading the silver amidst, eventually making it to Hannon’s system and ending them all.

  The corvette was but a particle to Machine.

  Penetration, insertion, docking. They took me to the center.

  Eight was there. Mirror after mirror, but no true

  Crucifixion.

  The bubble was bigger than a destroyer, and at its center they gently, gingerly removed my clothing, affixed bindings to my arms and legs. Whistler was always in good cheer. I was silent except for breathing, heartbeat, whispers between

  I didn’t fight. I couldn’t. I felt her, knew. There with me. Tears wept for me. But I couldn’t fight. The restraints were painless.

  This is Machine. This is your forever home.

  Walkway withdrew and the painter and ghosts left the chamber. A heartbeat echoes from walls miles apart.

  The bubble sea began to flood from the bottom of the chamber. Slowly, faster, faster. I strained at first against that tide, closed eyes and mouth and held breath until my temples throbbed, lungs screamed out, but in the end it was useless. I resigned myself to that. I opened my eyes in the shimmer of phased glass and took a breath and saw

  Machine glistening with the churn of phase, preparing for the beginning of an exile and

  Whistler’s corvette departing from Machine’s hangar and

  Berard’s lesser galleon flying at it and

  Berard’s ship itself blinking from the system to escape and

  the lesser galleon crushing Whistler’s corvette against Machine’s phased hull and

  bodies spinning off into space, erupting and

  destroyers on Catalyst target trajectory and

  i felt

  her

  safe, for now, in Berard’s galleon, running away

  and

  Machine began.

  The shudder of a million phase drives, each and every particle of my being dissembled, wrapped in warm viscous glass, ripped apart and placed tenderly back together, that tickle, that annoying tickle everywhere, everything. A vessel the size of

  I faded into the stars, into tomorrow and yesterday on a path into uncertainty. All I knew was that we were going far, going fast, going away from Lilith, away from Earth, into the deep Outer. No aliens, no robots, no things that go bump in the night, but ultimate terror at the realization of my isolation. This was the beginning of my forever exile, ordered by a woman now a child, ordered out of spite and frustration because I tried to stop her from ending a species.

  Stretched out far beyond body, mind, soul, stretched beyond that vessel of glass and rock, metal forged from planets and asteroid belts. One with everything, yet solitary in that void.

  Memory and desire, an ocean of scattered, shattered images: arch of eyebrow, line of nose, colors of eyes: forevers and hands, long lithe fingers, tips tracing my cheek. Lips. And. Smoothness of cheek: hers. and philtrum, the way the lips part, the way lip to gum to teeth: smile. Neck. Collar bones and the space between breasts, the skin above her heart, precious, accelerated heart, that weapon that I denied, that weapon I loved. Love. Will

  Screaming, crying out, but there was no one.

  Given years to ponder eyes, given decades to wonder in those eyes: futures. One. and I

  How much of myself did I hold in that stillness between our gazes?

  long-winded, esoteric. self-indulgent

  but what more do I have?

  I remember memories not my own. Coffee and marbles and cigarettes. Discussions of subjunctive case, sub-human species, something about a pillow, cheek-biting, and robots that complained about films.

  I know now that Berard ordered one of his galleons to ram the Whistler corvette. Ultimate sacrifice by men I never knew, never will. They died to save my Lilith, to save the

  The shudder of a billion phase drives. Decentralized soul. Faster than light, out and north, as the stars go, toward that single wish. Sense of nonsense, the mind expands to embrace, yet there is no one there, no one forever out there.

  Felt her fading, that touch…That touch faded. Until. lost.

  Alone: screaming because I didn’t know how to stop.

  c: format c.

  I don’t know who I am anymore.

  i think she’s perfect.

  when she’s here, i’m really here. when she leaves, a part of me leaves with her, that splinter of my eternal being that has hidden within her beautiful heart forever, and has finally returned after so long away. we resonate as one.

  i know that someday we won’t have this distance dividing us, these difficulties keeping us apart. i know each time that i look into her eyes that this time it is forever. i am patient. i can’t imagine a lifetime without her, now that i’ve found her.

  she fell asleep in my arms, and i followed her willingly, but not before studying every inch of her face, impressing each line around her ancient eyes, the bullethole dimple, the shape and feel of lips, the arch of eyebrow, the warmth of exhalation. so warm under that comforter, bodies curled together, limbs intertwined. i felt her breathing regulate, saw the flicker of her eyes behind closed lids, fell asleep with the girl i love in a perfect moment of peace.

  this is nothing like i’ve ever known, and i can’t wait for our next moment.

  i see forevers in her eyes.

  Shudder of a trillion phase drives, and I realized the depth of my loss.

  I knew that Mother would send someone else to get Lilith. The loss of Whistler and my ghosts wouldn’t stop her. She’d make someone else, send them in a faster ship, hunt that galleon down. She’d take her time, do it right this time. She had me out of the equation now, but her daughter was still loose. The most important piece of the jihad was somewhere between stars and times. I thanked Berard, hoped he knew. Hoped he’d take care of Lilith for as long as he could. I knew that Mother would get her eventually; I just had to find a way to escape from Machine before it was too late.

  my silence is my self defense

  Machine eventually severed my restraints, allowed me to swim
free. There was nowhere to go; I was no threat.

  He wasn’t the best conversationalist. I’d ask questions that he couldn’t or wouldn’t answer. He’d give answers that I couldn’t or wouldn’t believe. He had faith in Mother’s plan. He was friendlier than Gary.

  I found numbness in those years.

  Wondered what she was doing, if she was safe, if she’d been captured, if they had made the final attack on the “alien” homeworld. I didn’t know at the time that my father’s fleet had been the first wave, and that as a result of his discovery and attack, the “aliens” had hidden a star and half of their planets in a systemship. I didn’t know at the time that fate would bring our paths together in a very palpable collision.

  I know now that during those vague and silent monthsyearsdecades, Whistler and ghost Nine caught up with Berard’s galleon, fought the crew to the death. They found Lilith on the bridge, about to activate the destruct sequence. A heart breaks to think that she would take her own life. A heart breaks to know that I took her life with my own hands, and she lays here in my arms, blood now tacky brown, lips parted as if she wants to say something, but eyes closed in sleep, eternal sleep. I’ve killed her.

  Mother’s plan had changed. She no longer wanted a trusted angel to oversee the jihad. She got greedy. She wanted her daughter back, and she wanted to go to find Hannon and kill him herself in a ship named War, with a painter, a cowboy, a ghost. She wanted vengeance. She was dying, as she is now, each moment growing a little younger, feeding from this desert plain, the silver within my dying body, the silver that whispers to her even now: purpose. completion. an end.

  kissing the life into something that’s already died

  When she reached to activate destruct, they shot off her hand.

  Precious cargo: Catalyst. Maire was a jealous mother. She wanted her little flower returned.

  Slipping into madness. Strength through calm, confidence. No room for weakness, emotion, showing that emotion. The weak show emotion. The most poignant struggle: devotion to what seemed a lost cause, drowning within phase and something so much more. Never gave up hope, although voices commanded from the space behind eyes. Grasped to that which was ineffable: memory, cherished memory. Wound. To wound. Me.

  Would I have taken my own life, given something more than a bubble, an ocean, a Machine voice?

  Hold on…So tightly to those memories, of the moments, the sighs, the

  To know that I killed her…To know that a fragment of me shot her hand off. Did he love?

  How the work suffers for lack of clarity. How these final moments seem so trivial, not a fitting testament at all to a love that spanned decades and souls and something so much more than words. Ours is the story of a plague; we were the lost soldiers; mine are the tainted lips; ours is the broken love, spreading this contagion through the night. It is almost over.

  The child looks younger.

  Frantic now because I can feel its grip tightening. Silver. Suffocation. Crawling. It whispers.

  They shot off her hand and took her home. They left Berard’s vessel to collapse upon itself.

  I can only imagine her fear, her confusion. Going home to a world now dead, now empty of all life except the child sleeping at its center, the machines she made in those centuries, hollowing out the planet to create Guerra, and a cowboy named Hank. Fictional character, but she made him real. Twisted mind of a broken child playing god: let’s build a cowboy.

  Lilith went home to meet the mother she’d only known through dreams, through whispers at night, through that tickle at the base of the skull. Role-reversal: child becomes adult, adult becomes child. They fed on one another, fed on this war created by silver. One died as one lived.

  I miss her. She’s right here in my arms, in my heart, but I miss her. For the first time in so long, that touch is gone.

  Let me fall; let me join her soon, but not before vengeance. Please give me strength.

  Whistler and Nine safely transported her home to a dead world, a dying parent. Maire and Whistler and Nine and Hank and Lilith, all strapped into Gary, turning Earth inside-out in his departure, killing our home that we barely knew, feeding from the entire system to fuel his journey beyond light. Maire knew the target, knew even then: a systemship within which Hannon had hidden a star, a dying god, the last remnants of his species.

  They flew.

  I remember Machine’s capture, the collision and scraping. I remember the draining bubble, torches cutting into my prison, that tug of language behind the eyes as they lifted me out.

  i don’t feel worthy of her sometimes. i’m trying to learn, but it is difficult. she is beauty beyond beauty, kindness beyond kindness, that soul and those eyes that i’ve felt and seen for so long and now with whom i’ve finally been re-united.

  she sees beauty in things that i’ve taken for granted for years.

  i’ve never felt that complete: arms around my girl, in that place, in that moment.

  i saw beauty in the forever we share.

  The child speaks to me without words, begging. Begging. Time is paused; this weapon

  The truth I saw finally in Hannon’s eyes, the lifetimes he saw in mine. He’d found me, or maybe I found him, drawn together between stars and times by the ineffable, inexplicable. Our paths intersected and it was the way it was supposed to be.

  Moments of proof and realization.

  Maire’s attack on god, that clandestine infection of the host body, the release before her exile…The infection had spread to every world in Hannon’s system. Immediate, deadly, certain. This was a different silver, pure from the lumbers, pure from Maire’s time on the edge of the system. Will we ever know where it came from?

  It spread from Berlin and Hannon’s command vessel above the silenced first planet, using the carrier lines to crawl to each planet, disseminate in each atmosphere, attack and kill everything without the marginally-protective Y chromosome. It was neither a quick nor painless death. Hannon was allowed to watch his wife and daughters writhe in agony from afar, become infertile, silvered. Afflicted. Within a century, all would be lost. There would be no next generations.

  They developed a way to contain the infection with a cardiac shield placed above and around their hearts. It only prolonged; it didn’t solve.

  His was a systemship of men. By the time he found me, there were no more women.

  I remember looking at the shielded star hidden at the vessel’s core. So lonely. And within…

  What placed me in this body, this mind, this soul? What made me a part of this jihad, made my life any more significant than the trillions of others who have fought and died in this war? Why does a man become a focal point of history and existence when he would have so much rather lived in blissful anonymity? There are strands that connect us throughout time and space, drawing us together, pushing us apart. I just wish I knew why I wasn’t born into someone else, someone who died in the initial invasion, someone who rests now, unknown, forgotten forever. I don’t want this.

  I saw so much when I touched Judith, when I touched God, but I never saw the answer. I never found out why it has to be me. I don’t think she knew; the silver is something so much more than a dying ancient. The silver transcends time and space, comes from somewhere we can neither comprehend nor acknowledge. It screams from beyond, itches under my skin and there is the trigger, cool and unyielding, yet it could yield if I applied pressure. Voices.

  The heart speeds toward

  How human they were, how exactly like us except for two hearts, black blood, less oxygen in their atmosphere. The same uncertainties, the same power plays, the same emotions of loss and rage against Maire. She was our creator; forty thousand years hidden below the surface, directing our evolution, bumping our ancestors a few steps up the ladder. We were born of her.

  How human they were, fraught with the same desires, the same weaknesses. We were born of a defect: Maire and her prey: Berlin. She called to those early men, drew them into caves, altered their course toward


  How human they were.

  I remember shiver and tickling, that resonance that allowed us to pass through miles of solid glass into the trapped and wounded solar system.

  I saw the first signs of Hannon’s troubles, the fireworks of his civil war. Even in that moment, they fought from within, internal power struggle threatening to ruin everything Hannon had set into motion, the great showdown between the remnants of his species and she who had ended so much.

  Great fleets of vessels within the systemship, men fighting a war because they could, not because they really understood the severity of the situation. Maire had killed because of a plan gone horribly awry, an attempt to make a statement about her species’ dependency on the machines. She wanted to kill, yes, but that desire became ultimate. The taste of blood drowned her senses. Machines no longer mattered; she was consumed by silver machines herself. She lashed out, initially with Berlin and Kath’s help. They realized their mistake, and paid for it with everything.

  Visions of a night sky, stars unlike these or home, great wailsong of the lumbers in schools, blotting out the stars with blackness miles long. Warmth of skin, cool of air, the hope that they could change things, that they could retake their homeworld from machines with the simple technology reaped from giant flying trees.

  Maybe some of the men on Hannon’s vessel felt they no longer needed God. Maybe they thought if they surrendered her to Maire, the plague would end. So they fought, vessel to vessel, surrounded by glass, a sun trapped within metal and phase, lances of light enacting endings on their brothers.

  I’d never imagined that I would feel sorry for God when I met her. Never imagined that I would pity her.

  She looked so young. So scared.

  We’d made it through the rebels, through the bubble to the center star, tiny planet in orbit. We descended within, where they’d hidden God, this time not for sleep but for safety and hopefully recovery, but everyone knew. Everyone knew.

  We got out of the shiver. This was Heaven.

  Men lined the walkway in silence. Men, not angels, guarding the gateway to the kingdom.