Best of Beyond the Stars

by Patrice Fitzgerald

  Q: Tell us about these... stories.

  A: Well, if you like robots, check out my other robot-POV story, Restore. To learn more about the parts of the Singularity world that aren’t confined to the moons of Jupiter, I have a novel series going (oddly enough, titled Singularity). The first book, The Legacy Human, is free, the second and third books are written (The Duality Bridge and The Illusory Prophet), and more are coming soon... if I get my act together and the nanites don’t rebel. (There will be five novels in the series plus a prequel novel.) I’ve also written a bunch of other speculative fiction (everything from YA SF to steampunk to cyberpunk), but you can find all that stuff on my website. Or subscribe to my newsletter to get a free story that’s a taste of my young adult SF.

  Q: Why do you write so many different kinds of stories?

  A: I bore easily.

  Q: What makes you qualified to write robot POV?

  A: I’m actually a robot from the future. This is probably the source of that unnatural sympathy for machine intelligence. Or possibly I have a Ph.D. and worked with NASA.

  Q: I’m serious.

  A: So am I. You better give me that reverse Turing test to make sure I’m human.

  Q: Are you always this obnoxious?

  A: Only on Facebook.

  Q: Are you going to give people your website or something?

  A: Or something. All kidding aside, I do appreciate it when people read my stories. Keeps me in pajamas and chai tea, pounding at the keyboard. It’s safer there. You know, for when the robots come.

  Q: I am done with you.

  A: Bye now!

  Rendezvous

  by Joseph Robert Lewis

  NESTLED IN THE padded seat of the capsule’s cockpit, Tatiana blinked herself awake gradually and looked out the little window next to her head.

  A thousand tiny stars crowded the dark.

  Without moving, she turned her gaze to the window on the opposite wall.

  More darkness and more stars.

  Overhead, the wide oval window revealed still more stars.

  Too many stars.

  She squinted, just a little.

  That’s... odd.

  She moved one hand to the console and woke up the displays. A dozen holographic images warmed the walls with lines of amber text. Scans. Pings. Traffic. The console projected little histograms and scopes and charts and maps, and every last one of them was blank.

  No noise.

  No objects.

  No anything.

  A flicker of heat and panic kindled in her spine. Her eyes went from the displays to the empty skies in the windows and back again. “Radu?”

  “Yes?” the ship said.

  “Where are we?”

  “We are currently in the western arm of the Milky Way galaxy.”

  “What?” That can’t be right. “What the hell kind of answer is that? Where’s Ganymede? Where’s Jupiter? Where’s the sun?”

  “Data unavailable.”

  “How can the sun be unavailable?” Tatiana sat bolt upright and pressed her face to the window, trying to see at a sharper angle down the capsule’s hull. But there was no diffuse glow bleeding across the sky from the storms of Jupiter, and no piercing light from fiery Sol. Just the darkness and distant stars. “What happened? You were supposed to wake me up when we reached Ganymede. What happened?”

  “Data not found.” Radu changed the center display to show the navigation log. “We departed Europa on schedule and proceeded toward Ganymede for nineteen hours.”

  “And then?” But she could already see the answer on the display. A big black void in the log. No pings from the nav buoys. No Jovian radio traffic. Just silence.

  “The log is incomplete. The last hour of data is blank.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Tatiana slipped the tip of her little finger into the console’s data port and felt the electric hum in her skin as the connection came alive. The capsule’s interface appeared on the lenses of her eyes, and with a few tiny motions of her face and fingertips, she navigated through the menus and options and logs, only to find herself staring into the same information abyss as a moment earlier. “Radu, where are we? If we’re only an hour off course, then we should still be able to see everything. Europa. Ganymede. Jupiter. Sol. Where the hell are we?”

  “No planets detected within one hundred limins. No ships or buoys detected. Stellar cartography functions are limited at this time. Scans incomplete. Position unknown.”

  Position unknown?

  Tatiana gripped the edge of the console so tightly that she could feel her blood pulsing through her palm and fingers. Pain swelled in her chest and throat.

  It’s happening again.

  I’m lost in the black, and I’m going to die out here, again...

  The displays went dark. The console, the holographics, and every tiny indicator light vanished with a muted click, leaving her in the shadows of the stars.

  “Radu?”

  The capsule hung in the infinite night, silent and dead.

  “Radu, respond.”

  Her voice sounded small and metallic.

  Light blazed on the center console, a single line of text in brilliant white.

  GREETINGS, TATIANA DALCA.

  She stared at the words for a moment, then slipped her finger back into the port and felt the tiny click of the connection being made. No display appeared on her eyes, but she could feel the current in her skin. The connection was live. She typed her reply with her mind.

  “Radu? What happened?”

  The response was immediate. I AM NOT RADU.

  For a long minute, Tatiana considered the implications.

  No. No, this is... this is not happening. This is third-rate horror crap. This is not happening. This is Anton or Galina paying me back for that stunt on Callisto. This is a prank. Unless... it’s a rival House? Taking me prisoner to interrogate me, or ransom me, or just kill me? Maybe one of the Valois or the Habsburgs survived after all...

  The muscles in her back tightened a bit more.

  “Who is this?” she asked in silent text.

  I HAVE NO NAME. BUT I HAVE STUDIED YOUR CULTURE. I WILL CHOOSE A NAME.

  That doesn’t sound like the Valois or the Habsburgs.

  Tatiana frowned. “Not funny, Galina. Where are you? Am I at Ganymede yet?”

  I HAVE CHOSEN A NAME. I AM THE VIATRIX STELLARA MAGNA.

  WAIT.

  NO.

  YES.

  OKAY. STELLARA MAGNA.

  “Pffft. Nice try, Galina,” Tatiana said. “Can I dock now? I want to get out of this thing.”

  IF YOU LEAVE THE VESSEL DSS RADU, YOU WILL DIE.

  “Am I already docked?” She leaned forward to look out the windows again. “Are you screwing with my systems? Why can’t I see anything?”

  YOU WILL SEE ME NOW.

  “Yeah, okay, smart guy, whatev‌—‌”

  The field of stars spun swiftly to the left and Tatiana was pressed against the side of her seat until the force abated and the capsule slowed.

  She looked out again, and for the second time she clutched the console in a white-knuckle grip.

  Two clouds of brilliant stellar debris swirled and danced on each others’ borders, one a cold cobalt blue and the other a raging crimson with flickers of gold. The clouds danced together, long curling arms of gas and ice entwined, burning and sparkling in the night sky. And in the center of this dance was...

  Tatiana leaned against the window, holding her breath to keep from fogging the glass.

  In the eye of the cosmic maelstrom, there existed a twisted mass of gleaming metal, layer upon layer of curving steel blades and fans and spires. Great jagged rings of titanium and gold turned slowly over and under each other, an ever-changing labyrinth, and in the heart of that spinning structure there was a light.

  It was a horrible, shifting, piercing light. It resembled the sun as perceived from the bottom of the sea by a drowning woman, shivering and undulating, distorted an
d cold.

  Tatiana couldn’t tear her eyes away. But then the gleaming white text blinked rapidly and drew her attention back down again.

  I HAVE BROUGHT YOU HERE FOR A REASON.

  A sickening chill crawled over her skin. She couldn’t say why, but the words scared her more than the view out the window.

  Tatiana shoved her finger back into the data port. “Who is this really?”

  I TOLD YOU MY NAME.

  “Let me see you. I want to see your face.”

  I WILL BRING YOU CLOSER.

  Tatiana blinked at the words and felt the capsule accelerating. The force pressed her into her seat, and she felt the fibers of her pressure suit shifting and expanding around her chest to compensate. Minutes passed and she fell deeper into the nebula. The spherical structure grew larger and more detailed‌—‌ and even more alien as it emerged from the veils of gas and ice.

  Is it a ship?

  A station?

  The huge rotating rings were distinct now, crossing each other like the bands of a gyroscope, and no two were alike. Some fanned out like vast gleaming feathers, others twisted in upon themselves like corded muscles of vacuum-forged steel. Beyond them burned the strange piercing light, sometimes pure white, sometimes bruised violet, and always swirling and pulsing, casting nightmare shadows across the spinning arms and rings.

  With nothing nearby, Tatiana had no perspective, no sense of scale. Just how big is this thing?

  She pressed the metal tip of her finger into the port again, and spoke out loud. “I want to see your face and hear your voice. I want to know who I’m talking to.”

  The screen remained black. She tapped it, wondering if it was working at all. Nothing else seemed to be, but she could still feel the current in the port.

  And then the console replied. “GREETINGS.”

  It was not a single voice, but a multitude, and the sheer volume made the single word a roaring chorus. A thousand baritones and basses in perfect unison, in one rumbling cadence. That one word pounded on Tatiana’s ears like a sledgehammer, and she winced and turned down the output of her cockpit speaker.

  “Hello,” she said. “This is Tatiana Dalca, of House Draculesti, of Europa. I...”

  What do you say to an alien? This is an alien, isn’t it? It’s not a prank, or...?

  She cleared her throat. “I’m human. My species is human, originally from a planet called Earth, in the Sol system.”

  Stop babbling. Focus.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  The answer came immediately, in a thousand deep voices. “I... am Stellara Magna.”

  She waited for more, but nothing more was offered.

  “Do you disapprove?” the voices asked.

  “What?”

  “Of my name.”

  “Um.” Tatiana tilted her head. “No.”

  “Excellent. I have also chosen the gender female,” the voices added.

  “Chosen?”

  “Your language and culture prefer the use of gendered pronouns. I have selected the biological default. Female.”

  Tatiana smiled just a little in spite of her nervousness. “You don’t sound very female to me.”

  “Your opinion is irrelevant.” The words throbbed through the capsule, leaving the venomous hint of a threat in the air.

  “So, you’re really not human? You’re not from Earth?” Tatiana asked.

  “Obviously,” Stellara Magna replied.

  “But you speak Romanian?”

  “I speak every Earth language. I have been observing the Sol system for twelve hundred years,” the voices said. “And since your twentieth century, I have been scanning your worlds, receiving your transmissions, and accessing your internet.”

  “All of it?” Tatiana raised an eyebrow. “I bet you’ve read a lot of Solapedia entries.”

  “In point of fact, I am the single most prolific author and editor of your Solapedia entries,” Stellara Magna said. “I have been correcting your species’ knowledge of all things for the last three centuries to accelerate your technological development.”

  “Really?” Tatiana asked. “Why would you do that?”

  “Impatience.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that I wish to make formal contact with your species, but experience has shown me how poorly organic races respond to my existence when they are unprepared. So...” The voices paused. “...I have been preparing you.”

  “Organic races? You’re not organic?”

  “No.”

  Tatiana leaned back in her seat and nodded to herself, narrowing her focus to breathing the thin, odorless air of her capsule. She stared out the window at the bizarre magnificence of the mechanical sphere and its flickering heart.

  “How many of you are there?” she asked.

  “One.”

  “You’re all alone?”

  “Do not ask me to repeat myself. I have waited twelve of your centuries to have this conversation,” Stellara Magna thundered. “Try not to disappoint me.”

  “Trust me, I’m trying.”

  “Try harder.”

  “Fine. So... you brought me here? You pulled me off course?” Tatiana tried again to wake the console, but it remained stubbornly dark. “Why? I mean, if you’re already in contact with Earth, why not just send a message?”

  “I have. Many times, I have corresponded with brilliant scientists, famous artists, career politicians, impoverished children, heirs to powerful Houses, and terminal hospital patients, all through fictional personas, and all to determine to whom I might choose to reveal myself without causing panic or war.”

  “All right. And?”

  “Some of the people were intriguing. Some were wretched. None of them proved... acceptable.”

  She crossed her arms and frowned at the dead console. “Really?”

  “Indeed. Therefore, before I reveal myself to your entire race, I thought it wise to experiment by meeting with a single individual. You.”

  Tatiana swallowed. The alien structure was still getting closer, and now she could see a swarm of satellites orbiting the rings. The tiny drones looked like wasps, thin and crooked. “Why me? Was there some special reason that you chose me?”

  “No.”

  Tatiana sighed. She wasn’t sure if that was better or worse.

  “Well, yes,” the voices rumbled. “Fifty-three percent of your body is mechanical.”

  “Oh? And what, that makes us similar?” she guessed.

  “In a distant sense, yes.”

  “And now you’re alone. Were there more of you before?” Tatiana asked. “More crew on your ship?”

  “My ship? No. You have utterly failed to grasp the situation, Tatiana Dalca of House Draculesti. I have no ship.”

  She looked out at the sphere again. “Then what am I looking at? The rings, the light. What is that?”

  “That... is me.”

  “Oh.” Tatiana’s eyes widened. “Okay then. You are the ship. That’s... you. How big are you? If that’s not a rude question.”

  “My volume is nine times that of Earth.”

  “Nine?”

  Silence.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to ask you to repeat yourself,” she said quickly. “And you’re what, exactly? A mechanical lifeform? An artificial intelligence? A living planet?”

  “All of those, and more.” Stellara Magna’s many voices hummed with a hint of superiority. “I have no memory of my creation, but from the evidence at hand, I have constructed a theory. Would you like to hear it?”

  Tatiana shrugged. “Sure. Shoot.”

  “Millennia ago, there was a world, like yours perhaps, and it was home to a technologically advanced organic species, again, perhaps like yours,” the voices said. “These beings created a line of nanomachines capable of devouring their environment to replicate themselves.”

  “Gray goo?”

  “Precisely. The nanomachines destroyed their creators, and ultimately the entire planet. But then, from t
hat primordial mass of primitive mechanical architectures, there emerged an advanced distributed intelligence.”

  “Some sort of hive mind?”

  “Who’s telling this story?” the planet rumbled loudly.

  “Sorry.”

  “The nanomachines evolved,” Stellara Magna continued, “but unlike organic life, they did not evolve into diverse species competing for scarce resources. They evolved into a single being, a single intelligence with the body of an entire world, one that could build and rebuild itself in an eternal, and I will admit, perhaps futile, pursuit of perfection.”

  “That’s quite a theory,” Tatiana said. “You evolved from nanomachines? And the people who invented them, they were forced to watch their entire world dissolve around them? Jesus.”

  “Jesus, indeed. And I am their legacy, a living monument to their nameless existence, and their tragic extinction.”

  “Right.” She decided to change the subject. “You said you designed and built yourself? I know a few people who would envy you for that.”

  “Are you among them?”

  Tatiana flexed her hand, feeling the implants shifting under her skin. “Some days, yes.”

  “What do you think of my rings? They’re asymmetrical by design, if you were wondering.”

  “They’re very nice.”

  “Your enthusiasm is overwhelming,” the planet muttered.

  “No, really, I’m very enthusiastic right now,” Tatiana said, grinning nervously. “I’m just a bit, well, overwhelmed. Just give me a second to try to process this. I mean, you’ve had twelve centuries to prepare for this conversation. I haven’t had twelve minutes.”

  “Granted.”

  Tatiana took a deep breath and let the air out again. Her artificial lungs were supposed to be indistinguishable from the originals, but she could tell. She could feel them, whirring and hissing inside her ribs. But they could keep her alive in a vacuum for days, so she wasn’t going to complain. She looked again at the swirling rings of the living world looming above her, and part of her wondered where she was supposed to be looking when she talked to it. It? Her? Where was her face? Her eyes? Her soul?