Niaobi spat on the translucent pebbled flooring, his head spinning after the last shunt. The sky had altered radically. The Milky Way spread overhead in a thick ruby band, sprinkled with cobalt stars and hazy pearlescent patches reminiscent of a neo-impressionist painting. The world outside the facility looked black, no colors, no shapes to define the landscape.
He'd landed far out on the rim.
Twinges of panic jumped like ticks under his skin. His heart raced, and his tongue felt like it was coated in ground glass. The shunt felt like dying. You never got used to it.
"Sheie uo-gze." One hour. The thin scheduling patch whispered in Xhounese from his right cheek. It'd be an hour before the next transfer. He hoped it'd be somewhere closer to the core.
A sigh escaped his lips like his soul leaving his body. Niaobi was still new enough to courier work that every station felt sinister, every shadow a malevolent manifestation of his fear. He chuckled nervously. The sound echoed hollow and tense, ghost-like through the empty coliseum. The chill of his previous shunt, a world of bright sunshine and glinting frosted towers, clung to the tips of his fingers like an oily resin, and he hugged himself as he glanced around. This was the third empty world, yet another dead end on this arm of the galactic transport array.
He ached for contact.
His hands trembled as he adjusted the backpack at his feet. A pale blue light followed its outline. A white glow encircled his shoes, matching his movements. In the distance blue, purple, and green outlines highlighted islands of cargo. The shunt mechanism separated matter into categories, sapient life in white, non-intelligent living things in oranges and yellows, cargo--machines, metal, plastics--in various shades from green to ultraviolet.
The landscape he'd remembered from the previous shunt had changed. Bales the size of trucks shimmered above pale purple outlines, interspaced with green and blue heaps. But no white, no life.
Niaobi's mentor, a Zaiheq female still young enough to be unnamed, had carefully explained the transfer route. Interstellar transfer stations operated on a fixed schedule, with a frequency dictated by demand. High volume stations transferred platforms to multiple destinations several times per day. Far flung stations went years between shunts. His journey had been exquisitely timed, utilizing far stations to leap tens of thousands of light years in and instant. As long as he stayed on the platform.
An indistinct shadow skittered wraithlike behind a jungle of machinery, casting a dull crimson outline as it moved. Niaobi watched it nervously. It appeared again almost under his feet, leaving an impression of bat wings trembling against the textured floor.
Then it was behind him. He caught his breath, trying to quell his urge to flee. Nothing within the facility would hurt him, they'd said.
The creature's face shifted continuously, like rubbish tumbled against a cheap plastic sack. Enormous black-faceted eyes surveyed him. The thin line of its mouth split, revealing a grey toothless palate. Translators built into the platform resolved the being's hissing shrieks into English.
"You are a new form?" It asked.
"I'm Human." Niaobi stammered, puffing out a breath he could no longer hold. If it talks, it thinks. If the translator knows its language, then it must simply be another passenger bound for a similar location. It couldn't be dangerous.
"My people are new to interstellar travel." Niaobi tried to relax, blaming the tingling down his neck to the hollow feel of the gigantic empty platform.
"Zaiheq?"
"Yes, the Zaiheq are our mentors." Niaobi nodded, but then remembered his lessons about not using human body language. Despite his knowledge that the platforms were a safe zone, he still felt uncomfortable.
Niaobi explained humanity's experience with the platforms as the creature watched with expressionless eyes. He told how the first Martian expedition had discovered a huge coliseum under the Sedona sands, an abandoned complex housing the kilometer wide platform littered with containers of every conceivable size and shape. They'd cut their way into a few boxes, finding alien wonders and technology beyond imagination.
The cargo vanished on the third day of their pillaging. Along with it went the expedition's crew. At first, it was thought the platform might be one level of a multi-tiered storage system, other levels stacked for retrieval by some unknown device.
Then, a day later, the platform changed again.
It returned with the lost expedition members, as well as a band of cone-shaped quadrupeds with leathery skin the color of overripe plums. These were the Zaiheq, and they were not happy. The human incursion and destruction of property had jeopardized some touchy trade contracts, and the Zaiheq had demanded compensation. If they'd wanted to, that small force could have ended humanity that day. Instead, they offered to accept payment through services. Humans would run errands, perform repairs and cleanup, construct orbital bases, and do the galactic exploring the Zaiheq weren't willing to risk.
Niaobi explained all this in a hurried voice, words spilling in torrents as he nervously awaited the next shunt.
"Does your species travel much?" He asked.
"I am all." Its small stick-like fingers clicked together with a sound like wind through the branches of a dead tree. "I have been restricted for selecting too often. Few are left to me."
Niaobi had no idea what that meant. He stepped back, concerned. The alien followed, getting uncomfortable close. It didn’t seem to have the human sense of boundary.
"The selection has been poor since these terminals are installed." It waved a hand.
"Your people were here before the platform? Is this your planet?" Niaobi asked excitedly.
Although the Zaiheq seemed to control the galaxy, they were not the original platform builders. That work had begun long ago by a confederation of beings humanity had yet to meet. It would make Niaobi's career to bring home information regarding the Builders.
"This one is forbidden the use of these," it said.
"Forbidden?" Niaobi took a small step backwards. He swallowed, his heart racing. His eyes traveled to the shifting outline. Red was a signal of danger in human cultures. Could it have meant the same to the platform designers?
"How? Why?"
"Feeding." The mobile surfaces of its face shifted.
A wave of nausea rolled over Niaobi. He prayed for the shunt, the chance for escape. "Maybe you can talk to the builders, ask for a second chance."
"This one remains hungry."
Niaobi wanted to scream. He was a long way from home, a long way from safety. "Maybe you could change your diet to something new."
"Something new..." The creature’s hissing voice held a different tone, a colder edge. "You are new."
THE END
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