Eaters of the Light

by J. Edward Neill

  The lights of many explosions gleamed against the hangars’ sides. The first one stood only a thousand meters away, but hundreds thereafter made for a dark city beneath the night.

  Somewhere in the dark, sleeping in Hangar # 7, my ship awaited. A week ago, I’d have been able to march right in and climb aboard.

  But that night, with white-armored men and bullets filling the fields, I knew if they caught me, my fate would be far different.

  Quiet, I told myself.

  The glass partition stood three meters high. I touched its smooth surface with every intention of vaulting over it.

  I knew then I’d made a mistake.

  The glass was powered, meaning any number of programs ran inside it.

  At my touch, a thirty-meter wide section of partition turned bright red and began flashing.

  Great. A security panel.

  I backed away, and with a running start I leapt at the partition, scaled it, and hit the ground hard on its opposite side. Within seconds, I heard a break in the gunfire behind me. Shouts erupted. Someone fired a yellow flare into the night. Someone else cried out, “He’s over there!”

  At least they didn’t call me an ‘it,’ I thought.

  I sprinted toward the first hangar. Yellow light washed over a glass courtyard, whose surface blazed furious red beneath me. I couldn’t remember Sumer ever having such advanced security measures in place. Crime on the planet was nil. No one cared to steal, kill, or trespass. Everyone was too busy entertaining themselves.

  And yet there I was. In big trouble.

  I reached Hanger # 1. The vast hollow space inside lay shrouded in darkness. Its giant doors were wide open.

  No ship.

  Open on both ends.

  Run.

  I hurried inside. The yellow light and blazing red panels fell away, and the darkness swallowed me up. I glimpsed Hangar # 7 through the wide-open doors. It sat just a thousand meters away. Its doors were sealed shut.

  Doesn’t matter.

  I’m getting in.

  With a deep breath, I ran. My new body liked the feeling, and my long strides carried me through Hangar # 1 in seconds. I emerged in the open space between hangars. I considered that my final moments on Sumer, the planet I’d once saved from un-death at Strigoi hands, would be spent fleeing from men with guns.

  “Halt,” the soldier shouted at me.

  I hadn’t seen him. He and four others like him had been standing in the shadows outside Hangar # 1’s rear doors.

  I skidded to a stop.

  They stepped out of the dark and surrounded me.

  I held up my hands and stared at their masked faces.

  “My name is Lightbringer.” I hated to use the moniker Hephast had given me. “I’m here for my ship, the Sabre. It’s in that hangar, right there.” I pointed to the huge structure just ahead.

  With rifles raised, they drew closer. I slowed my mind to think.

  If I were in my battle-suit, I could’ve turned them to ashes already.

  Would I do it?

  No. Never killed a human before.

  “She’s Lightbringer,” one of the men said. They all looked the same – faceless behind their white helmets, awkward in their shiny new armor.

  “How can you tell?” asked another.

  “Blue hair. Tall. And look how she’s dressed. She’s got no enhancements.”

  “What’re our orders?” a third soldier asked.

  I didn’t let them finish.

  A shame.

  Was just getting used to this body.

  I slammed my eyelids shut. The men’s voices, the clatter of approaching soldiers, and the noise of distant gunfire died in my ears. The stars dimmed, and with a last breath, I felt all my senses fall away.

  Through a port in the back of my body’s skull, I erupted. I streamed into the night air, a burst of blue nano-light. I didn’t bother to assume a familiar shape. Formless, I looked down at my crumpled body and wished it hadn’t come to this.

  The soldiers pointed and shouted. They’d never witnessed an AI self-terminate its body before.

  No one had.

  Two soldiers leveled their rifles at my floating blue self. Another aimed at my body, which still looked beautiful, but was already dead.

  I didn’t care if they shot at me or the body I’d left behind. They couldn’t hurt either one.

  But I didn’t want them to damage Siraya’s capsule.

  I split my blue self into two equal parts. One half, I left floating above the soldiers in the shape of a naked blue girl. It was enough to distract them, even at five centimeters tall.

  My second half, I sent spiraling down into the front pocket of my dead body’s flight suit. I slithered into the tiny space, and with all my might, hoisted the silver capsule in my tiny blue arms. I wasn’t meant for carrying things. I’d never lifted something so heavy in all my thousand years, at least not in nano form.

  The weight didn’t bother me.

  But the dying warmth of my forty-eighth body made me shudder.

  Slow as a rising balloon, I carried the capsule to my other half. She and I rejoined, and the capsule felt only half as heavy. One of the soldiers leapt at me with his hand open wide. I fluttered higher, just out of his grasp

  And I smiled at him.

  One of the soldiers fired his weapon. His aim was awful, but the flechettes were so numerous I felt them sliding between my nano-particles.

  Like a gentle breeze, I imagined.

  Nothing like a Strigoi weapon.

  I felt tempted to mock the soldiers for their failure, but thought better of it. A hundred more came sprinting between the hangars toward me, and I couldn’t risk one of them having a light-gun or mini re-programmer.

  Up I flew, high above the massing men until I found myself floating above Hangar # 7’s roof. The last I saw of my human body, she lay on the ground with her eyes half-open, peaceful in her repose. The soldiers kept shouting. I paid them no mind.

  Gliding along the hangar roof, I found a duct and slipped inside. I cut through the absolute darkness, guided by my blue-lit body. Winding my way down into the void, I floated to a stop in a great dark space.

  In the hangar’s center, I hovered.

  There she is.

  My ship.

  The Sabre.

  She wasn’t like Joff’s original Sabre.

  She was better. Bigger. Deadlier.

  Her wings were scythes, smooth as still water, blacker than anything.

  Like a falling feather, I descended to the ship and found a tiny, me-sized port near its shuttered cockpit window. I’d added the feature decades ago, and it had always served me well.

  I heard the soldiers’ shouts as they broke through the hangar door. I almost smiled as I drifted into the Sabre, whose insides were dark, sterile, and silent.

  Home.

  The port I’d entered sealed behind me with a soft command, and with another whisper I awakened the Sabre’s insides. Blue lights flickered to life, colder than me, but utterly welcoming. The cockpit’s console booted up, the white lines and bright screens resurrected from sleep.

  Taking the shape I’d always assumed – a blue woman identical in feature to my human body – I placed the silver capsule on the cockpit chair.

  “Quantum engines, ignite,” I said.

  “Cockpit shutters, open.”

  “Initiate launch into Sumer far orbit.”

  “Avoid all satellites and orbiting spacecraft.”

  I looked longingly at the cockpit chair. I wished I could sit in it with a human body, just to feel the soft hum of the quantum engines as they awakened.

  I glanced to my right, where two liquid-filled cylinders lay in silence.

  In one, I glimpsed my new body. Its blue hair floated as if windblown. Its eyes were closed, and its limbs suspended in a nano-nutrient broth.

  Forty-nine.

  Hope it lasts longer than forty-eight.

  The quantum engines ignited. I looked at the S
abre’s vid-screen, and I saw my ship surrounded by white-armored men. If I’d wanted, I could’ve killed them all simply by ordering the ship to float through the hangar. The quantum field surrounding the Sabre, just like the fields generated by all interstellar craft, annihilated all matter it touched.

  You’re lucky, I thought of all the soldiers with their armor, their hidden faces, and their foolish guns.

  I’m in a good mood today.

  I’m going home.

  Baby Steps

  I curled on the floor, naked and shivering.

  I hated being born.

  Even after the worst of my shivers subsided, and even when I pulled two blankets around my shoulders, my bones still felt frozen.

  I’d entered my new body through a tiny port in the back of its skull.

  I’d gasped for breath as nano-fluids drained out of me.

  I’d lain in a wet puddle on the Sabre’s cold, hard floor, screaming in silence.

  With damp hair and blurry eyes, I crawled to my feet and staggered to the Sabre’s cockpit chair. The ship had already docked with my interstellar Ring, whose eight pods spun in an eternal slow dance.

  More than ever, I wished Joff were alive.

  He’d have held me. He’d have toweled me dry and dressed me.

  He’d have loved me.

  Still hazy, I peered around the Sabre. Its insides were stark and full of shadows. I was alone.

  And I wasn’t sure I liked it anymore.

  For a long while after awaking in my new body, I sat in a ball in the Sabre’s chair. My skin thawed and my vision sharpened. A few dozen at a time, I dispersed particles of my nano-light to my extremities, waking my nervous system. I knew my new body, but it didn’t yet know me.

  And then at last I rose and shrugged off my blankets. Naked once more, clutching Siraya’s capsule in my left hand, I stood before the second liquid-filled cylinder. The cylinders were redundant, both of them meant to create and birth my new bodies.

  My fingers numb, I keyed the sequence into the cylinder’s control panel:

  Command: Callista body type 001

  Release new cortical plug

  Initiate nutrient injection

  New body generation

  Command accepted: Incubation period five weeks until ready for inhabitation

  “Five weeks.” My throat felt raw and sore. “I’ll be in hypo-sleep by then.”

  Secondary command: begin hypo-sleep after new body generation is complete

  I closed the panel and backed away. The machines inside the glass cylinder stirred to life. A new cortical plug, identical to the one residing in my skull, tumbled into the grey broth. On a microscopic level, cells gathered around it, forming tiny pink blobs of tissue.

  Another new body began its journey to creation.

  No matter the cold, I paced through the Sabre’s cockpit. Already I felt better, almost at home in my new skin. I considered how many people were jealous of me, how many humans wanted to live hundreds of years.

  They didn’t know what it was like.

  They couldn’t understand.

  Scientists of the old world had given me life and found ways for me to inhabit new bodies, but no one had discovered a way to do the same for real-life humans.

  I’m a machine, I lamented.

  Humans are superior.

  The airlock between Sabre and Ring slid open. Barefooted, I walked a long hallway to a second door, traversing one of the Ring’s many spokes. My interstellar Ring was newly made, upgraded with the latest quantum engines, life-support systems, and weaponry, and yet its insides looked identical to its predecessors.

  It was no accident.

  Another door opened. I entered the food storage pod, whose ceiling window stretched end to end. Through it, I saw the planet above me, vast and shining.

  I imagined the rain falling beneath Sumer’s violet clouds.

  I saw myself standing in the fields where Joff’s house had been.

  And I blinked it all away.

  I left the storage pod behind. Through many doors I passed, walking at ease through the kitchen pod, the noisy life-support pod, and the observation pod, which was barren but for two metal chairs and a silver table.

  I came at last to the bedroom pod. Its shutters were closed, walling the room off from the stars. Even so, I remembered everything.

  Our chair.

  Our lamp.

  Our bed.

  The bed was old world, its posts fashioned of a metal and wood polymer no longer made anywhere in the galaxy. Its linens, white and clean, stretched across a mattress softer than anything on Sumer.

  It was the same bed Joff and I had shared, only not. I’d had craftsmen replicate it many times, though I couldn’t say why.

  ‘Sad robot girl,’ Joff would’ve called me.

  He’d have been right.

  I dressed in fresh clothes. As ever, my shirt and leggings were black, the only color I’d worn for the last several centuries. After combing my hair and wiping away the remnants of dried protein from my skin, I hunkered down at the bedroom’s console.

  How many hours have I spent staring at this screen? I wondered.

  Here we go again.

  Gently, I unsheathed the data chip from Siraya’s capsule. Before plugging it in, I hesitated. The muscles in my new body tightened. It wasn’t accustomed to stress. It didn’t know what to do with a thousand years of tension.

  I plugged the chip into the console.

  The screen lit up before me.

  I didn’t know what to expect. A montage of vid-scans from a grandfather to his lonely granddaughter? An extensive journal cataloguing the longest voyage between the stars ever made?

  The chip had none of those things.

  “One file?” My heart sank when I saw the lone blue circle of light. “Just one?”

  I touched the blue circle.

  The file opened.

  There, on the small console screen, a planet appeared. Crystalline blue, far dimmer than bold, bright Sumer, the sphere glimmered in the light of a distant star. Siraya’s grandfather must’ve collected the image during his arrival in the planet’s orbit…or perhaps during his departure.

  It wasn’t what I’d thought to see.

  Electric blue clouds swept across the planet’s pallid surface.

  Spires of frozen liquid punctured its sky, casting long shadows across thousands of tiny lakes.

  It looked beautiful…and cold.

  At such a distance, I couldn’t see any signs of human civilization. And yet I knew it was Hermes. The screen told me nothing, but I felt no doubt.

  That’s it. Has to be.

  I tapped the tiny white sphere on the screen’s upper right. The image of Hermes evaporated, replaced by a multi-dimensional map of the Andromeda galaxy. The map popped off the screen, floating in the space between the console and my face.

  The lights of so many stars, though microscopic, hurt my infant eyes.

  Impressive.

  Even with Sumer’s advanced technology, they’d never constructed a map so complete of the Andromeda galaxy. And yet there it floated, as detailed as I could’ve ever hoped for.

  I wondered how Hermes, a colony of only a few million settlers, had managed to chart the positions of more than a trillion stars. And then I knew the answer. The black symbol at the map’s bottom, a Strigoi mark, gave the truth away.

  Hermes stole the map.

  They’re already at war.

  Hermes had already made contact with our enemy. The knowledge both terrified and invigorated me.

  They might accept me. They might listen. They might be ready to finish this thing.

  Or…

  They might already be dead.

  I closed my eyes and placed my fingertips on the console. My hands, new as they were, didn’t remember what to type onto the screen. But my mind knew, and so I keyed away, typing a short sequence into the floating keyboard:

  Distance from current location to Hermes? I que
ried.

  Two-million, seven-hundred thousand, nine-hundred ninety-eight light-years, the number appeared on the screen.

  Length of hypo-sleep? I typed my question with my eyes closed.

  Seventy-two years.

  I leaned back in my chair. I felt tightness in my chest, a sharp anxiety tugging me in all directions.

  Seventy-two years? Generations will have passed by the time I arrive. The war might be over and humanity extinguished.

  Or…if Hermes knows something I don’t, the Strigoi might be gone.

  Can I do this?

  Seventy-two years promised to be my longest hypo-sleep. Even with the most powerful quantum engine in existence installed on my interstellar Ring, I’d be asleep for decades. I supposed I could’ve ejected myself from my new body and lived out most of the seventy-two years in nano form.

  But…

  If I think I’m lonely now…

  Imagine me after seven more decades.

  I keyed another sequence into the console. In moments, the computer plotted a trajectory across the void between Sumer and Hermes. I wasn’t human, not fully, but as I looked at the pale blue line, I felt my mortality.

  The vast majority of the journey would take me through the abyss between galaxies. No stars. No planets. No light, life, or hope.

  If something goes wrong…if the quantum engines die…I’ll be out there for an eternity.

  Not even the Strigoi will be able to find me.

  I shivered.

  Maybe I was human, after all.

  My fingers moved over the console faster than before:

  Command: ignite quantum engines

  Quantum path – Sumer outer orbit to within 0.5 light-years of Hermes orbit

  Shutter all windows

  Life-support – minimal

  Dead but Dreaming

  I expected to wake.

  Or to sleep forever.

  Or to die.

  But instead I dreamed.

  For all the advancements humanity had made, perhaps none were as remarkable as hypo-sleep. In it, bodies existed in indefinite stasis. Cellular activity ceased, while those who slept suffered neither decay nor injury. Guarded from gravity, time, and entropy, life suspended in a hypo-sleep chamber could go on for thousands of years.

  At least in theory.