Never Never Stories

by Jason Sanford

  As Dr Bonder settled into his seat for launch, having no idea how close he'd come to death, the shield next to me patted my belly. “Sad sad insides,” she muttered. “Soon you won't feel the sads.”

  I looked away, no longer certain I wanted my freedom this badly. That's when I saw Len. I'd seen her briefly at the pre-flight briefing and knew she was the captain's wife and ship's biologist. But those facts existed in my mind as only abstract knowledge. Len was merely another crew I'd pledged to protect in exchange for one day gaining my freedom.

  But to my surprise, as the ship prepared to jump Len left her seat and opened the holding pen. She kneeled beside me like Bonder had done, but unlike him there was no anger in her eyes.

  “I don't need comforting,” I said.

  “Good. I've none to give.” Len spoke with a strong brogue, a remnant of whatever poverty hole she'd grown up in. She stared at me for a moment and smiled, as if satisfied by what she saw.

  “You're lucky,” she said. “I was a kid when my mother killed a man. When the police arrived at our apartment, she hugged me once and sent me outside. As the police handed me to child services I heard the gunshot.”

  I understood what she was really saying – poverty holes were bad, but none were worse than the overcrowded hell of prison. Often better to take your own life than suffer prison, which was basically what I was about to do.

  “Must have been rough,” I said.

  “Maybe. But it's what I got. Only thing I wish is that my mom had been given your chance. Even if the ghosts had taken most of her, some part would have survived.”

  I nodded. That was the same reason I agreed to this. In my panic at the coming jump I'd forgotten.

  I grinned as Len made a fist and tapped my bound hands. “You never know how you'll turn out,” she said. “Might still be a good bit of you left.”

  “Very true.”

  “Then what are you afraid of?”

  Nothing, I realized as the ship jumped. At that moment I heard the barrier god's deep, soulful laugh for the first time as it flung a ghost deep into my mind. As the ghost popped my life and memories like a child's soap bubbles, I found myself singing a nonsense song – a little ditty from my youth, taken from the old cartoons I'd watched whenever my mother left me alone in our poverty hole. Mighty Mouse. That was the cartoon I'd worshipped as a child. Here I come to save the day!

  Len laughed as our ship landed on a new Earth. “Perhaps you'll like the new you,” she said. And I realized I did. And I also liked this kind person who dared see a lowly shield as human.

  * * *

  In the ship's infirmary, Len lies inside one of the healing bays, the warm folds of the ship's skin quivering and flowing around her. But this isn't a physical injury for the ship to heal. Instead, Len glares at us with inhuman eyes. Or perhaps something inhuman stares from behind very human eyes.

  Dr Bonder has ordered the ship to wrap the clear lens of an isolation chamber around Len's bay, and for some reason I'm glad I can't touch her. Inside me, Andy and the other ghosts whisper agreement.

  “Here I come to save the day,” Andy squeaks in his Mighty Mouse voice, but no one laughs.

  “Well?” Captain Couran asks. I didn't know. I want to know. I want to sing an answer, but none comes. Unlike Slap Jack and Sally Moon, who are on their second voyage, I've experienced five trips and nine ghosts. Most shields drop out after the first voyage, afraid at how much of themselves they lose when the ghosts slam inside. But I no longer worry about losing myself. So inside swim my ghosts, with the most recent, Andy, ghosting on top. This type of ghosting I understand.

  But what holds Len isn't a human ghost, which no matter how it rearranges your consciousness is still a copy of some human's ancient memories and life. What grips Len is beyond me and Andy and the others to understand.

  “Say it again,” Len whispers in a voice licked to pain, breaking me from my thoughts. “The save… The coming…”

  I glance at the captain, puzzled, but Andy knows what she wants and welcomes his new audience. “HERE!” he sings loudly, “I come to save the day!”

  Len laughs. The part of me never replaced by any ghost again remembers that song from my childhood and wonders if this is why the barrier god gifted me with Andy Kaufman. Because of a mutual love of Mighty Mouse and dreams of saving the day?

  I look past Len's inhuman eyes and twisting rage and see the pale-mooned face I've worshipped from a ghostly distance. For a split-moment Len's face transposes across another woman's, a face bloody and begging me not to kill her as the knife in my hand twitches to her blood. Other faces also appear – the dozens of people I killed before being caught. Tears form within several of my ghosts as I beg them to destroy these memories. I want to be totally free of the evil I once did.

  With a laugh, Andy swallows the memories. The other ghosts cheer as I flash to a memory from my last mission. Of Len and the captain standing beside me, kissing each other while the sun sets on a dusty Earth which has never known human footsteps. As I watched their happiness that day, I wished so hard to no longer be me.

  “You're not, you know,” Andy says in my voice. “Not you, that is.”

  The captain and Dr Bonder look at me in puzzlement, not understanding what I'm talking about. But from inside the isolation bay Len claps her hands and smiles.

  “I never understood humor until I began ghosting humans,” she says. “Here I come to save the day. Heh. Such an impossible thing for any of you to do.”

  “Did you kill the other shields?” Captain Couran asks coldly.

  “Ask fun-fun boy.”

  The captain glances at me and Andy whispers this is a truth – the alien ghosts killed them.

  “Whatever you are,” the captain says, “you must know we won't take you back to our world. There is nothing to be gained by what you're doing.”

  Len rolls over and places a hand on the isolation lens separating her from us. “This form is no longer Len, but parts of her remain. Do you remember meeting her?”

  Captain Couran nods cautiously.

  “You were celebrating Mardi Gras in New Orleans,” Len says. “A thousand beads around your neck. Thousands of people surrounding you. But you looked so lonely. So lonely in that crowd. So far from the high lands you were born in.”

  I feel Captain Couran shiver beside me, and see her fingers twitch into a fist.

  “Then Len met you. She loved you right away. Whispered how you were going to fall in love with her. She knew you could barely hear her words because of the screaming crowd, but she said them anyway.”

  Captain Couran's eyes mist ever so slightly. Yes, she remembers.

  The ghost in Len smirks. “Perhaps I'll destroy that memory. Make it gone forever.”

  Captain Couran yells and attacks the isolation lens as Dr Bonder and I pull her back. Bonder orders the ship to add a sleeping agent to the healing bay's air.

  Len, though, merely laughs and slices her bare belly with her fingernails, slicing back and forth, digging deeper and deeper, until her intestines explode out. Dr Bonder orders triple the sleeping agent but it has no effect, so we watch in horror as Len smears her guts across the isolation lens. The clear barrier blackens and dies and shatters to the release of purest evil.

  And I don't mean Andy Kaufman evil. I mean evil way beyond any of his jokes.

  Captain Couran aims her gloved hand at Len and the air crackles to the ship's neural electricity, but it doesn't stop Len. She reaches out and touches Dr Bonder, who stiffens and screams. Len then turns to me – eyes glazing, lips smacking – and grabs my neck in a choke hold. I can't fight, instead feeling as if I am Len. As if I'm strangling myself as Len's memories run in and out of my mind. The blackness that took Bonder begins to grab for me, but the creature in Len calls it back.

  “Not yet,” Len whispers. “I'm saving you for last. Until then, accept this gift.”

  She means Bonder, who screams again and doubles over in pain as he reaches for me, his eyes beg
ging me to help. But I can't do anything for him. I stumble out of the infirmary – wondering why the creature spared me – as Captain Couran follows and seals the hatch.

  Through the lens, we watch as Bonder's skin blackens and crisps like he's being burned from the inside. The sparks of his eyes are the last thing to go, as if Len wants everyone to see how much pain he experiences. And even though I should be happy at seeing Bonder suffer, I want so bad to tell him its okay. To say that pain only lasts a little while before it always disappears.

  As Bonder collapses, the blackness in him spreads into the ship's living deck and walls, a shivering web of black virals which greedily cover everything in the infirmary. Captain Couran gasps as her connection with the ship vibrates to their shared pain. I grab the captain and pull her through a closing bulkhead as the ship attempts to isolate the infection.

  Before the bulkhead sphincters shut, I see Slap Jack and Sally Moon eying me in panic. The black web reaches beyond the infirmary and spreads across the deck with amazing speed, washing over my friends as they scream. They rip their own bodies apart with teeth and nail and numb-crunching bone.

  Then the bulkhead finishes closing and I no longer have to watch my friends die.

  * * *

  Besides Slap Jack and Sally Moon – who as shields technically don't count – we lost seven crew members before the ship isolated Len. Through the ship's internal eyes we watch the crew go insane, slicing and dicing themselves and attacking each other. I've often seen a shade of this type of behavior among people who are ghosted, but never to such a deadly, permanent degree.

  And throughout this violence Len stands before the ship's main eye smiling at us, the ghost inside blazing, her black intestines hanging free.

  Captain Couran plugs herself into the ship's nerves to determine the damage. When she unplugs, she looks perfectly calm and collected, which scares me and my ghosts more than anything.

  “Len is preparing to jump the ship,” Captain Couran says. “That blackness we're seeing isn't the ship dying. It's whatever's inside Len reworking the living tissue and neural nets into a technology it can control. The good news is the ghost appears to have limited control over organic tech. But that won't stop it for long.”

  Before the captain's face hovers a pretty swirl of rainbow colors as the ship whispers how this alien ghost's actions mesh with data from countless expeditions to other dead Earths. Even in my brain-addling state I see that this creature or others like it have been responsible for the destruction we've seen on so many worlds. They infect each world's humanity like a virus and spin people into a terror-killing craze.

  “Is there any way to save the day?” I ask. Andy groans at my lame joke.

  “We have to kill the ship,” Captain Couran says. “That will prevent the creature from reaching our Earth.”

  “The problem?” I ask, because if my memories of Andy's life prove one thing, it's that you always encounter problems on your explosive trajectory toward success.

  “The problem is we can only kill the ship by destroying both the main ganglion cluster and the backup.”

  I curse. The main cluster is located in a shielded area nearby – while it will take a lot of work to cut into the main cluster, we can do it. The problem is that the backup cluster can only be accessed through the bridge, which is on the infected side of the ship. To reach it, someone will either have to brave Len and her ghost, or go around Len by taking a walk through the radioactive ruins of this world.

  The captain gestures at her two remaining crew members. “It'll take all three of us to cut through the main cluster's shielding. If you're willing to try for the bridge, we'll cut through here.”

  I glance out a porthole at the heat-shimmers of high radioactivity.

  “I could order you to do this,” the captain says. “As a shield, you agreed to give your life for this ship. But Len would hate me if I ever gave such an order, so the choice is yours.”

  I nod, touched by the captain's concern. I start to tell her I'll do it – only to have my words killed by Andy, who howls in my head. He tells me not to sacrifice ourself for some stupid-headed ideal. The other ghosts echo his concerns, most not wanting to die a second time. Afraid of death on a world with no barrier god to copy their essence and preserve them again for all time.

  I wouldn't have been able to control myself against their united front without Aquilia Maesa, who whispers in her ancient Latin for the ghosts to be quiet. “We're memories,” she says softly. “Copies of those who once lived. It doesn't matter if we live or die. But if we do this deed, then maybe we will matter.”

  In all the years Aquilia Maesa has lived within me, she's never tried to force her way to the top of my mind like the other ghosts. But now, Andy and the others shrink before Aquilia's noble words and memories. With a smile which reminds me of Len, Aquilia tells me to proceed.

  “We'll do it,” I inform the captain, who knows me well enough to not ask whom this ‘we' might be.

  * * *

  Captain Couran orders the ship to wrap me in a quickie pressure suit grown from its skin – and when Andy asks for the suit to have a gold Elvis look complete with frills, the captain bites her lip and makes that happen. The ship also creates a razor knife from one of its bones. As for the plan, the Captain makes me recite it over and over, each of my ghosts taking their turn: I'll exit the ship through the upper airlock, run along the ship's spine, and cut my way into the bridge. I'll then destroy the backup brain complex.

  If I succeed and the captain and other crew finish their own cutting, nothing more needs be done. We'll die here in the waste of this world.

  As the airlock sphincters open, Captain Couran smiles at me. For the moment I feel the wash of nostalgia. Suddenly I'm Len, standing on a crowded New Orleans street as she meets Captain Couran for the first time. I blush when I see Couran's blue razor eyes gazing back at Len. I feel purest happiness as, later that night, the two of them kiss and talk and embrace.

  Andy panics at the memory, saying we must have been infected when Len touched us earlier. However, Aquilia notes this doesn't feel like an infection. Instead, it feels more like we've been ghosted. She swims through my mind and, with the only laugh I've ever heard her make, points to a new cache of memories growing within my synapses. Len. A piece of Len rests within me.

  For the first time since leaving prison, tears tumble my eyes. Captain Couran asks if I'm okay. “I'm good,” I say, wondering if some part of Len wanted to save this memory. If she ghosted it into me to keep it from the angry creature inside her.

  Captain Couran salutes me and shuts the airlock. Once outside I run along the ship's spine, Andy singing off tune piano notes to each vertebra I step on. Even through my suit the outside world burns, its radioactivity warming my skin. Or maybe it's psychosomatic, me feeling hot knowing the radiation is cooking me down all slow and tender.

  Around the ship spin destroyed buildings and skyscrapers and houses and real ghosts – angry ghosts who if real would scream and bite because they weren't copied to some barrier and preserved for later days. No, these are the ghosts of the deadie-gone-dead, the ghosts of those who can't return as a copy preserved haint. As I feel the lingering memories of the people I killed so long ago – not enough to see them, but enough to know I truly did such horrible deeds – I swear I won't let my Earth go this way.

  When I reach the ship's bridge, I slice through the clear collagen fibers and wiggle inside. Captain Couran has ordered the ship to obey my commands, so when I remove my suit's glove and touch the backup ganglion cluster I find myself suddenly understanding how Couran feels. The ship is another ghost. It now lives inside me, kicking Andy and Aquilia and the others to the rear of my consciousness.

  Through the filter of the ship's mind I see Len. She stands, guts hanging out, in the blackened remains of the infirmary. She's still reworking the ship's controls, her viral touch turning blood and nerves and bone into a hard pseudo-flesh she can control. She's also frustrated –
the alien ghost prefers the hard tech of metal and computers. She screams anger at some impasse and stomps the exploded remains of Dr Bonder. I try to reconcile this sight with the tender memory of kissing Captain Couran thrown into me by Len, but reconciliation fails.

  As if knowing I'm watching, Len throws the blackness around her into the ship's main eyes. The ship screams in pain as its internal eyes crack and feedback surges our connection. I fall back across the bridge, shaking from the severed link.

  “It's coming for us,” Andy whispers, echoing what the ship has shown us. “The bulkheads won't hold it for long.”

  Andy sounds resolute, almost brave, and I nod as the other ghosts inside me voice agreement. I pull the knife out and, with my ungloved hand, caress the backup ganglion cluster for a moment. The ship weeps in pain and fear. I hate to add a new murder to my life – she's been a good ship – but with a quick motion I stab the knife in and twist and turn, punching through the sticky material until I'm shoulder deep in brain.

  To my relief, the ship doesn't scream. It simply dies, a brain with nothing more to brain over.

  I stand beside the captain's chair as my ghosts cheer. Even though it is likely wasted effort, I pull the glove back on my suit. That will give me a little more time in this radioactive world.

  That's when I notice the ship climbing into the sky.

  The skyscraper skeletons and radioactive dust fall away as the ship tumbles up, moving higher and higher. I've seen this so many times. A prejump flight. Once we are high enough not to materialize in a mountain or building, we'll jump. The ship is dead, yet we are about to jump.

  Before I can ask Andy and the others what's going on, the bulkhead leading to the bridge blackens and cracks, dead flesh falling away as Len climbs up beside me.

  “Thank you,” she says, twirling her guts around her fingers. “The ship wouldn't stop fighting me. But a knife…” Len caresses the hole I cut through the ship's mind. “As you know, a knife always tells. Perhaps we are alike, you and I.”

  Andy howls with rage, the purest emotion I've ever experienced from him. I realize then why Len didn't kill me when we touched. She wanted to use me. Use me to free her. Use me to help kill the ship.