The Star Collector

by Matthew William

  “What’s wrong?” Tammy asked.

  “My plants are all dead.”

  “They were fine yesterday,” Tammy said. “How could they have died so quickly?”

  “That guy must’ve sold me crappy seeds,” Joe said. He sat down at the table and laid his cheek in his forearm. The artifact floated the air next to him, still flashing inside the plastic bag.

  “Well, as interesting as all this is...” Alma said. “Cassandra should be here any minute.”

  She and Tammy climbed down the on-ramp to the grass below, the deputy carrying the blinking artifact in the gray plastic bag with her.

  Joe forced himself up from the table and followed after them.

  “What are you doing?” Alma asked.

  “Stretching my legs,” he answered.

  The woman just shook her head.

  They waited outside the Crown Vik amidst the steam from the ship’s descent through the atmosphere. Joe stood, arms crossed, in the fresh air. The yellow star in the sky glowed warmly onto his skin. Breathing was difficult, not because of a low oxygen level, but because his heart was being at twice the usual rate. Anticipation was so unpleasant sometimes.

  From over a nearby hill a woman in vintage clothing approached. The first thing Joe noticed was that she wasn’t wearing a pair of star-shaped aluminum earrings.

  Alma waved. “That’s her,” she whispered to Tammy.

  “How did they meet?” Tammy asked.

  “They went to school together,” Alma said sarcastically.

  “School, like college? Like Joe was an older student and went back to school later in life?” She looked at Joe with a grin.

  “I’m only 30,” Joe said, rubbing his sweaty hands on his pants.

  “When did you break up?”

  “Seven years ago,” Joe said. It seemed like such a long time now that he said it out loud. It was long enough for all the atoms in his body to be replaced with new ones.

  Cassandra walked straight up to Joe. She stood before him and looked him square in the eyes with a curious look on her face. Without warning she wrapped her arms around him and held him close. Her hair and clothes smelled of rose and leather – she still wore that perfume Joe had picked out for her all those years ago. Or she just wore it now to torture him.

  “I’ve missed you, you pathetic piece of garbage,” she announced.

  Tammy gasped.

  Alma didn’t. She was used to it. In fact, this was one of the nicer names Cassandra had called Joe.

  “Wow. Why don’t you tell me how you really feel,” Joe said, stiffly patting her on the back.

  Cassandra pulled back to take a look at him with a smile. “It’s good to see you.”

  “I didn’t have much choice,” Joe said. This was way too much for him. It was embarrassing. It was humiliating. It was a mistake coming here. He turned and walked back onto the Crown Vik.

  “That’s why I wanted you to stay on the ship,” Cassandra called out.

  “You know Joe,” he could hear Alma say. “Never one for directions.”

  For a moment he considered staying there in the ship. Finally, his pride overrode his better judgment and he grabbed an overnight bag from his bedroom. The others were already halfway down the hill towards the small hovercraft Cassandra had arrived in. It was an antique MG, nearly hundred years old now. It had been manufactured for deliveries on Ceres among the sky scrapers and had a domed glass roof for easy access. The body used to be forest green back when Joe owned it. Cassandra had painted the thing mustard yellow without him around to object.

  They flew over the lush landscape. Joe had forgotten how beautiful this planet was up close. It was hard to believe that all this life had come from earth, but indeed it had. The settlers that came with their plants and animals and seeds and microbes and gut flora started the process more or less by accident. And once the terraforming equipment got going, it was only a matter of thirty to forty years before you had a complex ecosystem on your hands.

  But Bolstra 5 took it to the next level. Joe would have compared it the Tuscan countryside, had he known what that was. The rolling hills with valleys carved out by winding rivers. The quaint little cottages dotting the landscape. The purple carrot flowers swaying in never-ending fields. It was a waking dream.

  Every now and then the planet would rumble and a piece of the crust would protrude from the ground. The tectonic plates had a mind of their own.

  “My neighbors, Annette and Johnny, brought over some supplies when they heard I had company coming,” Cassandra explained to Alma who sat in the front seat. “In fact, the whole community chipped something in. We really have a fantastic group of people here now.”

  Good for you, thought Joe.

  The hovercraft flew up over another hill and came upon clearing where a tree house, designed in a minimalist architectural style, stood beside a brook. Cassandra parked in the driveway.

  Joe hopped out. His feet crunched on the familiar pebbles. This had been his home once upon a time. What had Cassandra done with the place? It was as if all the changes he held at bay were made once he was out of the picture. The wooden deck was extended around the whole tree now, blocking the front view of the house. The old shed was nowhere to be seen and now all the tools were probably stored inside somewhere.

  They climbed the spiral staircase, the anxiety rising in Joe’s chest with every step. The sturdy wooden frame work rumbled with the steps of four people. Cassandra opened the door to the spacious center room. The smell of wood treated with linseed oil reminded Joe that this was where he used to live.

  “How long do you need to stay?” Cassandra asked Joe, pointing him to the guest room. He’d never slept in there before.

  Joe nodded to Alma. “This was all her idea.”

  “How soon before we can speak to Halle?” Alma asked.

  “I have a pending appointment tomorrow,” Cassandra said. “At eight in the morning.”

  “Then we’ll stay until tomorrow,” Joe said. “Until the meeting and not a second longer.”

  Cassandra stared at him, a saddened look came over her face. It appeared as if there was so much she wanted to say, but held back because there were others present.

  “Maybe we should go and get some fresh air, Tammy,” Alma said, reading the mood of the room.

  “Being upset isn’t going to solve anything,” Cassandra said to Joe.

  “Well, being upset makes me feel a little better,” Joe replied.

  “Let’s go,” Alma commanded, grabbing Tammy by the arm.

  “Do we have to?” Tammy asked, she had everything but a bowl of popcorn in front of her.

  “Yes!” Alma answered.

  “Because in the end you said it was my choice,” Cassandra said, now seeming to ignore the fact that there were others present.

  Alma grabbed Tammy by the ear and pulled her to the door.

  “Alma said she agreed with me,” Joe said.

  The woman stopped upon hearing her name and pointed a finger at him. “Don’t you dare, Joe. Don’t you dare drag me into this mess. It was all your choice.”

  Joe rolled his eyes. It was clear he wouldn’t be getting backup from her. He looked back to Cassandra. “I just thought you had values.”

  “You thought I had your values,” Cassandra said.

  Alma pushed Tammy and herself out the door.

  “Why did you stay here?” Joe asked, glad to finally be alone so he could take off the gloves. “Why do you give your time to something you know isn’t true? Was it worth losing what we had?”

  “I need something to believe in, Joe.”

  “And I don’t?”

  “No, you do,” she said. “You just don’t know it.”

  “That is so… that’s condescending, you know?”

  “Call it what you want, but it’s the truth,” Cassandra said.

  Joe shook his head and looked out the window. He remembered the beginning of this conversation all those years ago and the one phrase
he muttered that he wished with all his heart he could take back.

  ‘What does a robot need religion for anyway?’

  That was the beginning of the end. That word – robot, or the R-word as woke friends of androids liked to call it – was the worst word you could use for a self-aware mechanical person, for it implied they had no free will.

  Cassandra was designed with an empathic nervous system, meaning she could feel what others felt. Perhaps now she recognized the feelings Joe was having. Regret. Loneliness. Self-pity. Pride. Did she know the reasons for these feelings? Could she be piecing them together?

  Joe did his best to go numb, but it was too late.

  Cassandra shook her head and stormed to her room, slamming the door shut behind her.

  Joe was left in the kitchen all by himself. He let out a stress-filled sigh and went for a walk all the way back to his ship. After tinkering around for a while, he figured out what was wrong with the warp drive – a faulty coupling – and fixed it. It was nice to be alone for a while, although the words, ‘it was a mistake coming here’ echoed like a chorus through his mind the whole time.

  He equipped his gun holster once again. It made him feel secure.

  When he arrived back at the house it was dark and the three others were fixing dinner. He noticed Cassandra taking the candles and wooden sculptures from the table. Joe went to help her put the things away.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  “Why bother?” Cassandra asked. She seemed resigned, as if nothing mattered anymore.

  Joe sighed and clenched his teeth. That was the mood he had never learned how to handle.

  “Still have that temper I see,” Cassandra said, setting her things in a cabinet.

  That was the annoying thing about her empathy, she could sense him losing his temper even when he didn’t lose his temper.

  “Yep,” Joe said. He went to take his old seat at the table, but was met by a stack of books that seemed to be sitting there all the time. It appeared Joe had just met his replacement. He knocked them from his chair.

  Tammy didn’t seem to notice the mood in the room.

  “This is a really nice place you’ve got here,” she said to Cassandra with a smile. “Have you taken interior design classes?”

  “No, I haven’t,” Cassandra said with a convincing blush response. “You like it the way it’s laid out? Because I can tell Joe hates it.”

  Tammy shrugged and surveyed the room. “I bet they have some design classes at the university.”

  Cassandra smiled. She couldn't really be hurt by somebody she didn’t care about, she was much like a human in that way.

  Alma came and set the plates of salad on the table. Leafy greens, roasted peppers, pine nuts. It was a symphony of red and green. Everybody took a seat.

  “Are these vegetables organic?” Tammy asked, inspecting the food before eating it.

  “All grown by me and my neighbors,” Cassandra said.

  “Oh thank god,” Tammy responded.

  “Tammy’s in heaven,” Joe said. “You should see what she’s willing to do for organic sprouts out in Sector 121...”

  “Here we go with the sprouts again,” Tammy replied.

  “Unspeakable things,” Joe went on.

  Cassandra covered her mouth and tried not to laugh.

  “What are these plates made out of, by the way?” Tammy asked, tapping the edge of hers with a fork.

  “They’re aluminum,” Joe said.

  “Is that common here?” Tammy asked.

  “It is for Cassandra.”

  “Why, may I ask?”

  “Well,” Cassandra said with a grin. “Aluminum is an underrated metal, I think. When they discovered it – in France I believe it was, back in the 1700’s – they thought they had discovered this super rare, valuable metal. And there was this big to-do about it and they even went so far as to make the royal family’s silverware and dishes out of it. Then a few years later, when they realized it was probably the most common metal there is, it went from precious to worthless overnight. I always liked that story.”

  “Not to mention it works as a conversation piece,” Alma added.

  Joe took a sip from his cup. The metal also made the wine taste funny, which was an underrated benefit.

  “Something you said earlier caught my attention, Cassandra,” Alma continued. “The fact that our meeting with Halle is pending. Why is that, exactly?”

  Cassandra nodded and carefully cut the food on her plate. “That’s for my sake. I need to ask the big question before I make it official.”

  “And what’s the big question?” Alma asked.

  “What’s the reason for the meeting?”

  “Does that matter?” Alma asked.

  Cassandra stopped and put her fork and knife down. “Halle is the most powerful mind in the universe. And she doesn’t like to be bothered with trivial things. If I make an appointment and she gets bored with the topic at hand, guess who loses their Halle privileges?”

  Cassandra pointed a thumb at herself.

  “I see,” Alma said and looked to Joe.

  “Right…” Joe said. “Well, we have something of extreme archaeological significance and if Halle gets bored with that... then I can’t help her.”

  “What makes it so significant?” Cassandra asked.

  “It’s an artifact that some powerful people are after and we don’t want it falling into the wrong hands,” Joe said, hiding the fact that they were planning on getting rich in the deal.

  “Do the wrong hands mean not yours?” Cassandra asked.

  “To be honest, I’m not sure whose hands would be the wrong ones,” Joe said. “All I know is this item could be dangerous and potentially super valuable. But don’t worry, you’ll be compensated for your Halle connection.”

  “Why don’t you just come out and say it, Joe?” Alma asked. “It’s from the Talashaa ruins.”

  Cassandra’s aquamarine eyes opened wide. “I think I know what it is then.”

  “I believe you’re mistaken, darling,” Alma said. “It’s from inside the Talashaa ruins, from inside their Dyson sphere. Nobody knew this thing existed before a few days ago.”

  Cassandra nodded and looked back down at her food.

  “What do you mean?” Joe asked, looking to her. “You think you know what it is?”

  “It’s the egg that contains their ghosts.”

  Alma spit out her drink, then realized that Cassandra was serious. “Oh, I see... that wasn’t a joke.”

  “No, it’s not,” Cassandra said. “John Merger found their computer records here on Bolstra 5. It was the Talashaa’s last entry...”

  “Allegedly,” Joe butted in and looked to Alma and Tammy. “Full disclosure, this is all hearsay. There was no proof of him seeing the records at the temple. He said the data tapes turned to dust right after he viewed them. So...”

  “Nonetheless,” Cassandra continued, undeterred. “This artifact very likely could be where their spirits reside.”

  “But it’s not,” Joe said. “Because there is no egg that contains their spirits because that’s just a stupid myth.”

  “You used to believe in this stupid myth,” Cassandra said.

  “Really?” Tammy asked with a chuckle.

  “I tried for a while to believe in it,” Joe said, with a sarcastic smile. “There’s a difference.”

  Cassandra cut in. “When gathering data, one should consider all the angles without prejudice, no matter how stupid you may think said angle might be.”

  Joe rolled his eyes. “I for one think there should be a stupidity limit.”

  “And since our appointment with Halle is tomorrow,” Cassandra went on, “That means we can take it to the Seer tonight.”

  “The Seer?” Alma asked.

  “He’s a Talashamen prophet,” Cassandra said.

  “‘Prophet’ is being very generous,” Joe muttered.

  “He can see things that others can’t,” Cassandra interj
ected.

  “It this a religious ceremony?” Tammy asked.

  “In a way,” Cassandra said. “I’d describe it as more of a spiritual experience.”

  “Because I don’t really feel comfortable with that,” Tammy announced. She glanced to Joe with an uneasy look on her face.

  “Spiritual experience is going a bit far,” Joe said.

  “He connects to the Great Talashaa Specter,” Cassandra said.

  “The guy smokes pot and has an improvised monologue,” Joe said. He turned to Tammy. “It’s nothing serious.”

  “Well, I think this could be potentially useful,” Alma chimed in. “Like you said, any information can help, especially when it comes to informing a potential buyer. They may at least find the story interesting.”

  “The only people who would put any stock into this story are Talashamen,” Joe said. “And none of them have any money.”

  “We’re doing it, with or without you,” Cassandra said.

  “Yes, I thought you were supposed to be open minded, Joe,” Alma said, joining in.

  “I am open minded,” Joe said. “Just to things that aren’t stupid.”

  “So,” Alma said, surveying the table. “We have a skeptic, a sincere believer, a believer in something else, and me, an opportunistic believer, going to see a prophet tonight.”

  “Ought to be a good combo,” Cassandra said with a smile.

  After dinner they started the journey in Cassandra’s craft to go meet the Seer. The Seer held his seeings in a hollowed out tree trunk about a mile or so from the sea. They parked in a nearby clearing and walked the rest of the way through the waist-high grass.

  “Who’s the girl?” Cassandra asked Joe once they were out of earshot from the others.

  “Are you asking because you’re jealous?”

  “I’m asking because I’m getting a weird vibe from her.”

  “Well, I’m not a hundred percent sure I can trust her, to be honest,” Joe said.

  The beech tree they came upon was massive. Joe reckoned, if there was a large enough hole drilled through its center he could probably fly the Crown Vik through, no problem. They all stood and admired it for a moment. Then, when they realized the tree was locked, they waited around awkwardly for the Seer to arrive since he had the keys to get in.