by Tim Lebbon
“Oh, maybe,” she says. “Truth? I think he’s a little…” She trails off, glancing at the floating device.
“I suppose I’m something of a celebrity,” I say. I feel suddenly sorry for her. It can’t have been easy, being assigned my safekeeping so close to their wedding date. “He shouldn’t worry. You’re not my type.”
“So what is your type?”
“Three thousand years dead,” I say, gripping the thin handrail as the platform completes its drop and kisses the ground. “Trillions of miles away.” I step from the platform and Olivia quickly follows.
“Shall we walk to the river?” she asks.
“Why not?”
We’re no longer arm in arm. I feel ashamed as my foolishness up in the tower, trying to make Luke feel jealous and regarding it as some sort of victory. It was a stupid, petulant action. You don’t know yourself, I hear in Geena’s voice. It’s something she used to say whenever I got philosophical about life, the universe, and our place in it. Usually after making love, lying in bed in our room while Cradle subtly adjusted the air temperature because of our combined body heat. I might talk about where our lives were leading, what we’d do when we were old, how many generations after us it would take to reach Canis Major, and Geena would say, You don’t know yourself. She never elaborated or changed what she said, nor did she append it with anything. It was a statement that had always ended my musings. Usually after that we’d fall asleep, and the next day I’d awake to my duties once again.
Olivia and I reach the river. The platform has drifted after us, and now a small service drone brings drinks and an apple for each of us. I lob the apple into the river and see it bob downstream, carried away from me and the tower. Olivia doesn’t comment. The floating drone whispers slightly louder as something new is stored inside.
“So tell me what happened next,” Olivia says. “If you want to. If the time’s right.”
“It’s more than right,” I say. I want to finish my story and shed myself of its weight. It will always be there, but I feel a sudden urge to move on. I want the trial to be over. I’ll face its consequences, and then give in to my private grief. After spending almost three millennia in cryo sleep, my brief time in the tower has felt as if I’m frozen in time.
“But this is the part you’ll probably have most trouble believing,” I say.
“Try me,” Olivia says.
I smile. “I’m not sure I believe it all myself.”
* * *
I tried communicating with them again. Previously, when the thing had itself wrapped around Bridge and we’d been conversing, I had no idea how my words were carried, nor how I heard its voice. Cradle had confirmed that it was not transmitted through my implant, so the words had come from elsewhere. Yet Cradle had not heard them. They were spoken aloud only inside my head.
“Please listen to me,” I said. “What do you want? How can I help?” I spoke into silence.
Cradle had adjusted the viewing screens around Bridge so that they showed the creatures’ approach. Knowing how large they were made the sight even more awe-inspiring, as they drifted in from the distance. They came together, floating through space with those long tendrils or wings twisting and probing as if tasting the void. They did not appear to touch each other. Indeed, it seemed to me that they purposely avoided coming into contact with their companions. As they closed on the ship and parted, their movements were followed on separate screens.
In reality it was impossible to tell which individual I’d conversed with, yet I was still certain that I knew. The being approaching Bridge was the creature that had been there before. Its body spread, tendrils splaying wide, and then it enveloped the nose of the ship. Outside viewing ports were covered. The screens grew dark. A vibration that had settled in the ship began to increase, and my ears popped, as if the ship’s structure had suddenly compacted and compressed the interior space.
Are they going to squeeze until we burst? I wondered, and incredible though that idea should have been, it did not seem unlikely. Cradle was my whole world, but these creatures made it feel vulnerable, weak, and small.
I had killed one of them. One of their billion-years-old friends, or family member, or partner. Why wouldn’t they squeeze until Cradle burst and came apart?
I took in a deep breath and held it. When I exhaled, my ears popped again and hearing rushed back in. All I could hear was that steady, incessant vibration.
“Cradle, what is that noise?”
“It’s the ship’s engines,” Cradle said. “Retros have come online and are being fired.”
“Retros?”
“We’re slowing down.”
I blinked in shock. Cradle would only ever commence slowing down when its destination was within reach. It would take years, expelling precious fuel in minute quantities to affect a decrease in velocity. No one on board would feel anything.
“You did that?” I asked.
“Of course not,” Cradle said.
“Them.”
“I…” Cradle seemed confused, lost for words. Though an AI, Cradle was never confused. It was a self-learning and constantly adapting intelligence, but I’d always believed that the aspects it lacked––those seen as downsides and detractors––were the exact facets that meant it could never be a true facsimile of human. Cradle did not suffer from memory loss, depression, anxiety, boredom, or love. And it was never confused.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I’m losing control,” Cradle said. It sounded wretched and lost.
“Of the ship?”
“Of myself. The orders to fire the retros came from me, but I’m not aware of making them.”
“It’s those things.”
“Of course. My concern is, what other orders will they make me issue?”
“Can you tell how they’re accessing you?”
“No.”
“I need to talk to them,” I said. “Find out what they want.” I moved closer to the darkened viewing screens, as if being nearer would help me communicate with the creature now wrapped around Bridge once more. “What do you want?” I asked, voice raised.
The ship shook. The retros breathed gas, slowing the billion-tonne ship infinitesimally. Cradle muttered something to itself.
“I have to find Geena,” I said, and that was suddenly the most important thing of all. I couldn’t do anything here. The creature had called me to Bridge to say so little, and now it was saying nothing at all. I was useless. If even Cradle was confused by their presence, and manipulated by them, there was no way I could gain any advantage.
My guilt was heavy, but unlike Cradle, my existence was still my own. I had to find the woman I loved. It wasn’t just a need for closeness, comfort, or familiarity. I was also desperate to see forgiveness in her eyes.
I ran across the bridge area towards the wide double doors at its rear. I was so used to doors whispering open before me that I walked right into them when they remained closed. I moved back, then forward again, willing them to part.
“Cradle?”
“I’m sorry,” Cradle said. “That’s not me.”
“They’ve trapped me here?”
“Yes. Yes.” It barely whispered the words. “Oh, I’m so sorry. They’re in me now. I can’t feel them, or detect them, but I also know it’s definitely not me issuing these commands. Not willingly. It just can’t be. It’s beyond my programming to…”
“To what, Cradle?”
“Kill.”
“What’s happening?” My heart beat faster. The vibration travelled up my legs, a steady hum that seemed to set my bones and flesh in sympathetic motion. A sickness was seeded deep in my gut, a sense of dread and foreboding. Everything about the ship and our mission was already irrevocably changed, but I feared it was all about to change some more.
“External airlock pods are equalising,” Cradle said. “Internal doors are opening. Every single internal door on the ship, numbering two thousand, one hundred and twenty. All except that o
ne you wish to pass through.”
“Which airlock?”
“All of them.”
I gasped, trying to take in the enormity of what Cradle said.
“How many?”
“Seventy-two from the base of Bridge to the end module of Drive.”
“They’re going to decompress the ship,” I said. I struggled to compute what this might mean. Everything I knew was here, and if the creatures went through with this action, all of that would be gone. Cradle would be gutted, everything inside turned out.
All those dead.
All those still alive.
“Close the doors!” I said. “All through the ship, lock them shut, protect as many people as you can.”
“I can’t,” Cradle said, and it sounded like a child. “I’m trying. I’ve tried. I’m just not myself anymore. I’m … helpless. They have me, they’re deep inside and they’re not letting me…” The AI drifted off, as if its attention had been stolen by something else.
“How long do we have?” I asked.
“Never long enough.”
I started kicking at the doors trapping me inside the Bridge, trying to prise my fingers into the closed edges to tug them open. They did not budge. They were vacuum-sealed, magnetically fixed, and as solid as the surrounding hull. There were hundreds of doors like this throughout the ship, every one of them designed to be immovable and unbreakable in the event of a catastrophic decompression.
This was the only one that remained closed.
“Incoming communication,” Cradle said, and beside the door a comm screen flickered into life.
“You can’t do this to us!” I shouted at the screen. Maybe the creature was going to berate me some more, or blame me, or perhaps it merely wished to gloat. I could not even begin to imagine the intelligence and knowledge these creatures carried, yet the idea that they might enjoy what they were about to do did not seem so unlikely.
The face on the screen was one I knew so well.
“Geena,” I said.
She was wet and slick, hair plastered down with cryo gel. Her eyes were wide. She was afraid, and I could not reach through to hold her or offer comfort.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Bridge.”
“Did you speak with it? Did you say sorry?” She was panicked, and kept glancing away from her comm-screen at something happening out of sight.
“Of course,” I said. “But I don’t think it worked.”
“Airlocks are cycling up,” she said. She scratched at the screen as if to force her way through. “There’s nowhere to hide, no safety, every door is locked open, what are we going to do, why can’t you make them stop––”
“I’m trying!”
“––why can’t you give yourself to them instead of letting them take all of us?”
“I’m not letting them,” I said, and then I heard a terrible sound. It was Cradle’s voice like I’d never heard it before. They were the last words I heard the AI say, and they marked the end of everything I knew.
“Airlocks opening,” Cradle whispered. “Everything will change.”
I reached for Geena. She wasn’t even looking at me anymore. I saw her pulled away from the screen, and I thought I heard her scream my name. But it was probably the sound of atmosphere being blasted out into space, and the screams of countless people being carried with it.
I turned from the door and looked at the larger screens around Bridge. Two of them were still obscured by the creature wrapped around the ship, but on the others I saw my life being given to the cold, cruel void.
Most of the bodies flowing out from the ship on rivers of frozen air were already lifeless, but some still moved. I saw limbs waving, hands clasping. Somewhere in that staggering mass of the dead and dying was Geena.
It was the worst thing I had ever seen or imagined, but I could not turn away. Even if I’d tried, I believed that the creature would somehow have forced me to watch. This was my comeuppance.
Millions of bodies streamed out from the ship in seventy-two directions, as well as great clouds of other debris––clothing, furniture, paper, everything that had made the ship home. The deathly flows seemed endless and by the time I blinked, my eyes were burning and watering, my own held breath stale in my chest.
I exhaled and breathed in again, and I knew that I was Cradle’s last survivor.
“Bastards,” I whispered. “You bastards.” I wished my life would end also, but I could not even find the courage to do it myself. I simply stood there and watched. When the ship was fully vented to space, I sat on the deck, defeated, and wondered what might come next.
I heard it first. Though all of the ship but Bridge was open to vacuum, the sounds were transmitted through the superstructure. I immediately associated that gentle knocking with memories of the thing’s tendrils, tapping and probing about the ship’s exterior. Now they were inside.
After a while I felt as well as heard the impacts. They were growing harder, louder, and much closer. I looked around Bridge one more time and then closed my eyes.
The doors behind me creaked.
I took in a huge breath and held it, but the expected explosive decompression did not come. Instead, something grabbed me roughly around the torso and lifted me from the deck.
As I gasped in surprise and opened my eyes, I was tugged out through the open doors and carried roughly along corridors, impacting walls, breath knocked from me by this violent journey down through the ship. I tried to make sense of what held me in its grasp. It felt cool and dry, strong, immovable. Though I tried to see, the movement was so rapid that my head was being flipped left and right, my vision blurred.
I could still breathe. Somehow, for some reason, the being was keeping me alive. It had killed everyone else on the ship, but it was preserving me, though none too gently. I was helpless within its grasp, and my movements were too sudden and violent for me to even consider taking action. All I could do was hang on and await the end of this journey.
I imagined its face, and wondered whether it had a mouth, a stomach, a need for sustenance. Perhaps it had reserved that final torture for me alone.
I have no idea how long its tendril bore me through the guts of the ship. Probably it was little more than a minute. That blurred, rushed passage was my final memory of Cradle. The AI remained silent, the ship shorn of its purpose and meaning, empty and forever cold. And somehow, between blinks, the being I had offended so much put me into the deepest of sleeps.
I was awoken thousands of years later when the escape ship I’d been placed in reached Earth. My cryo-pod had functioned perfectly.
I am not home.
* * *
“It killed everyone,” Olivia says.
“Except me.”
“Terrible. Terrible.”
“All gods murder their people,” I say. Now that I’ve reached the end of my story I feel lighter, and curiously hopeful. Maybe there is a future after all. I’ve told my tale and survived its telling, and I stare along the river’s course and see the future happening. It’s just waiting for me to join it.
“I feel much better,” I say. “I’ve emptied myself of the story. Every part of it, good and bad, including all the terrible things I’ve done. All the people I killed.”
“You didn’t kill them yourself,” Olivia says.
“Geena,” I say, closing my eyes and remembering my final sight of her––wide eyed, scared, and probably not thinking of me at all. I look up into the clear blue sky. She’s somewhere out there now, and not for the first time I try to imagine her. Many trillions of miles away, floating, dead for so long and destined to drift forever, frozen and broken. Perhaps she’s still close to other corpses from Cradle, but it’s likely that various collisions with other bodies, and differentials in their initial trajectories from air locks, mean that she’s now alone. She’ll still be there when I’m long gone. Even this Earth, reborn and rejuvenated against all the odds, will not outlive her.
Just l
ike those strange, terrible creatures, she’s destined to float through the endless void forever.
“So now you know everything,” I say to Olivia. The sun feels good on my face, the breeze caresses my arms, and I’m glad to be alive. This place is beautiful. I don’t want to return to the tower, but know I’ll have to soon.
Luke drifts down on another platform, landing close to us and stepping out onto the grass. He nods to Olivia, and he seems quite different to how we’d left him only an hour earlier. He looks happier, more confident.
“I’ve taken the liberty of ordering some food and wine,” he said to me. “I thought you might like to eat with us by the river. There’s a nice spot a little downstream. We could go by platform or…?” He raises an eyebrow.
“Let’s walk,” I say. We set off together, Olivia and Luke hand in hand. They look happy, and I’m happy for them. I can still feel Geena beneath my fingertips, a handful of days and three thousand years ago.
I blink and see her adrift, skin frozen and split, eyeballs cracked.
“When’s the trial?” I ask. “I want this all over with, one way or another.”
“The trial’s just finished,” Olivia says. They pause, expectant, but it hasn’t come as a real surprise. In the scheme of things I’m not sure anything could surprise me anymore.
“It wasn’t just me telling my story,” I say.
Luke points at the floating drone. It’s been whispering and humming along with me ever since I was brought to the tower, recording my words and actions. Maybe it’s even the judge.
“We thought it was how you’d be most honest and open,” he said. “There are still traditional trials held, sometimes. But mostly the days of courtrooms and juries are in the past.”
“What’s the verdict?” I ask.
“That’ll come soon,” Olivia says. “It’s still being computed.”
“So you were defence and prosecution?”