Close Your Eyes

by Paul Jessup

  And he remembered creatures, wispy and made of delicate glass with complex minds as big as stones, prancing through the landscape. Their brains were knots of information, containing enough electrical impulses wrapped in the meat to control an entire human city.

  And he remembered hunting and riding these creatures, controlling them with equations, and the sky burning, and then he was no longer Sugoi, no longer anything. He was instead this language and all the memories and thoughts it contained, his body a shell to its invading personality.

  Words sprang in the mind, the language a series of statements, commands. Arm equals lift. Arm is raised. Leg equals stand plus walking. Sugoi’s body stood and started walking. The communal memories hummed inside his brain, fireflies at night, blinking to one another in communication. The language had consumed him; the language had taken residence and controlled him.

  Sugoi was no more. His patuek danced in his brain, moving between the grey folds, trying to reboot his memories, his thoughts, his being. With each attempt they were bounced back, pushed back, rewritten again and again by the invading thoughts and commands of the language.

  We plus hurry, thought the language, human body mind equals paper thin, parentheses, relative equation to thrak hunters. Mind not equal permanent.

  Then it thought in a sequence of complex functions, listing the amount of time it had left to occupy this mind before it shut down and the brain meat atrophied.

  30

  Mari sat on the floor of the navigation room, ancient wires crisscrossing above her head in a cat’s cradle of information networks. Loose bits of electronica slid down from the nest: glowing LED frames shining like blue stars and dancing LCD monitors covered in complex charts and graphs that sang in statistical fragments. The floor beneath her knees was separated into nine concentric circles lined with flickering shadows that danced in colorful shapes like animals prancing. The rings radiated out from a large blue globe that squatted in the center of the room, watching everything yet saying nothing.

  Along the edges of the circles were flickering lights, communicating complex waves of information throughout the latticework of wires above Mari’s head. In front of her was a golden ball that carried no reflections. She stared at the ball, her numen suit still tight against her skin.

  The butterfly fluttered about in her metallic skull, the tiny red jewel eyes flashing on and off like a blinking star, communicating to the golden orb in front of her. The orb swallowed the binary words, translating them into complex algorithms.

  The ground around her erupted in red and blue fire, the flames dancing along the edges of the concentric circles. These burning sigils eventually morphed into planets, stars, and galaxies, hovering before her in a sparkling holographic maze of light.

  She turned the starmaps in her mind, staring at the different apparitions of time and space that floated before her, her brain calculating different destinations across the galaxies, different projections into different universes.

  Itsasu wanted to go to the Aatxe Port. She thought it had something that would complete the mission. Mari had wondered for so long about the purpose of their mission. Itsasu had never told them what they had found on the ruins of the third moon of Torto so long ago, never explained exactly why they wandered the stars, stealing from dead cities and spun-down relics of starships.

  Until now, Mari never felt the need to ask. But the mission was almost over, and if it ended, Sugoi would leave or kill her, and she wanted more than that. She couldn’t stand being without him, even though he had tried to kill her and his brother. Because it wasn’t always about murder. This was the first time he had expressed the rage she knew he held within his heart, and he hadn’t killed her. He had let her go because he loved her. He loved her enough to save her. It wasn’t his fault that his heart was possessed by demons of anger, uncontrollable in their explosive emotions.

  No, no. They wouldn’t be going anywhere near Aatxe port. She picked up a floating holographic orb, watching the light spin and bend between her fingers, coating them with a tingling sensation. She fed the coordinates to the navigation center, a path. One that went to a star system far away, into a realm she had never visited before. This little wild goose chase, she thought, is going to go on for a long, long time.

  Act IV: The Beauty of Our Weapons

  31

  Hodei slid the door closed behind him, the light of the canisters coating his small bedroom in an icy winter glow, the temperature in his cramped corners dropping degree by degree, his shoulders and arms covered in goose bumps from the cold. He walked up to Iuski’s preserved body, her voice echoing in the distance of his thoughts, her brother’s voice wandering around, wrapping between them.

  He had learned to concentrate on his own thoughts, to drown out the whispering white noise of the two patuek that shared a body with him. She was still so beautiful, even though she was an empty shell, and her mind now danced with his.

  He tapped on her cylinder, a lonely and barren sound, the cold burning the tips of his fingers. Her thoughts rose up in his mind. My body, she exclaimed. Oh, it’s been so long since I’ve seen my body.

  He turned, ignoring her thoughts, dwelling on the empty static sound that he used to control his own mind once again, to not be taken over by the ghosts who possessed him. He slid his card across the front of the door and watched it open with a loud wheezing sound, rust particles floating in the air like a spray of mist. He turned and walked out the door, seeing Mari at the end of the hallway. She ran toward him the minute she saw him, her legs springing into a quick sprint. The door slid shut behind, just in time, hiding the bodies he had stockpiled in his room.

  Mari’s metal face glinted in the halogen lights that dangled from the ceiling like fruit from a tree, the twin butterflies dancing about in a fury of emotions inside the lattice work of her skull. She ran up and hugged Hodei, muttering into his ear, “I thought he killed you. He threatened to do it, to do it to me as well. I’m so glad you’re alive, so glad. That means he loves you, don’t you understand? It means he loves us.”

  He let her hug him, let the feeling of her body so close wash over his skin. She smelled so lovely, a mixture of sweat and soap and stale starship air. Other thoughts fought for control in his mind, but he pushed them aside and focused on Mari hugging him, holding him close, his shoulder wet with her tears.

  “I’m okay,” Hodei said. “He tried to kill me, I think. But something stopped him. I don’t know what. It sure as hell wasn’t love.”

  She said nothing in response, only held him close, carefully close. He wanted to kiss her now that she was vulnerable, now that she was out of Sugoi’s gravity. She couldn’t still love that giant anymore, could she? Not after this. Not after the fear he had seen in her eyes.

  A voice broadcast through the ship’s intercom, the speech hollow and distant and metallic, as if traveling through thousands of years to this moment. Itsasu, speaking as the ghost of the ship. “Crew is expected to follow the required procedures outlined in our guidebooks for usage of the entanglement engine. Repeat, we have disembarked from the parasite ship and have sealed all exits. Once we reach our destination you will be expected to continue with repairs.”

  Her voice was mechanical and tired, like a wound down automaton whose springs had ceased to store energy and was about to collapse. Hodei felt a pang of regret, remembering a wind-up toy he had owned as a kid, a little clockwork robotic thing with an AI placed into its skull that ran on the wind-up coils. It was a complex version of a simple toy, a combination of old lunar clockwork creation and new space technology.

  He had named the toy Lucy and taught her several basic words that she could follow. He taught her how to draw simple things and even read to her from his favorite books. One day he had found her smashed on the ground, Sugoi standing above her. He was short and round, back then, well before his growth spurt in his teens, like a tiny, bouncing ball of hate with hair that danced over his head in a pale-blue fire.

  S
ugoi had done that out of spite. He had been jealous of the attention Lucy received. He had demanded that Hodei play with him. That Hodei love him.

  He remembered being distant and numb for a long time, the world a grey, motionless shadow just out of reach. It still haunted him, the voice of the doll, the way they had talked into the long hours of the night. Holding the mechanical hand as he taught it to draw, the tiny gears in the arm remembering each movement, storing it in the delicate database in the mechanical head.

  And then, seeing the teeth of gears dug into the ground, the shattered glass skin, the coils and springs scattered on the floorboards. The glass eyes plucked out, missing.

  The memory made him choke up a little. Not enough to cry. It had never been enough to cry.

  He held onto the memory a moment more, and then let it drift away and out of his mind. Mari was there, holding him, worried about him. He latched onto that. Sugoi was gone, out of the picture. He wouldn’t smash her like he smashed Lucy. Couldn’t do that.

  He kissed the top of Mari’s head, her hair brushing against his lips. I shouldn’t have done that, he thought, This will not end well.

  In response she shoved him back and ran down the hall of the ship. He felt like calling out to her, telling her to wait, to not go. He didn’t mean to do it. The words got stuck in his throat, choking him in their misery.

  She looked over her shoulder as she ran and shouted at him. “We’re leaving soon and I don’t think Sugoi’s on board! We can’t leave him stranded on that other ship.”

  Hodei called out to her, confused. “But he tried to kill me! Let him rot in the belly of space!”

  She did not turn her head this time, her voice echoing from around the corner, teasing him. “It doesn’t matter. I still love him!”

  The lights of the ship dimmed to a dull grey, covering the hallways in the color of mist. He felt lighter as he walked back to his room, sliding his keycard into the reader and opening his door. He floated a little, felt the air become a little thinner. Itsasu was shutting down unnecessary tools so as not to burden the ship’s reactor. He floated into his room, the door slowly shutting behind him.

  At least I still have you, he thought, looking at the brother and sister. Their thoughts wandered around the landscape of his mind, emitting nothing more than background noise. He didn’t even have to concentrate on blocking them out, they just floated away. Noise. Nothing more. Just noise.

  He floated over to his bed and strapped himself down, preparing for the quick, bursting jumps that the entanglement engine would use to thrust through the fabrics of reality. The two canisters floated next to him and he hoped that they would not be damaged by the violence that erupted with each jump.

  Sirens blasted through the egia, blaring into his ears, drowning out all thoughts as he watched the bodies float like two giant fish in clear water tanks. The first thrust was always the worst.

  He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth. His thoughts swam, his blood danced, and his whole body tensed into a laser light being thrust forward through the cosmos. He felt sick, his mind filled with floating letters, floating bubbles of his childhood, of his life. Clang, clang, clang, the canisters banged against his bed. He hoped briefly that they would not break as the ship slowed down, just for a moment. The first jump was finished. The second jump was about to start.

  In his dizziness the other voices in his head could no longer be pushed aside. Their memories, their words, brother and sister, flowed over him, contaminated him, controlled him.

  His thoughts became the background noise, his memories the whisper in his mind as the ghosts took over, replacing him momentarily. The ship darted forward again, his body spasming in seizures from the violent thrusts through the holes in reality.

  32

  The ship unwound, slowed down, the crew still strapped in and dizzy sick from the accelerated leaps through the universe. Up ahead was a space station, a ghost station, a beaten down, floating scrap of a place, sending out a distress signal, giving its location in static coordinates. Other ships floated nearby, long since dead, mummified in the empty void of space.

  Bodies clung around the gravity of the station, ringing around it, a debris of corpses. Itsasu saw this in her holofluid, and she gasped and floated back.

  The heart of the ship spoke to her, appeared to her using its avatar. You have been betrayed, it said, this is not our port of call. There is a distress signal. It says where we are, and it is nowhere near where we need to be.

  Itsasu flailed inside of her prison, the fluid dancing around her body like amber gelatin. She cursed and swore. “Betrayed,” she said. “But by who? You knew that this was a false destination, yet you followed it. Are you working against me as well? Both you and Mari? To keep me and my love apart?”

  The ship’s avatar flickered, grainy, then smiled. Put a finger out against the holographic port. The holograph danced, blinked, then became more solid. Zoomed in, details of the outer reaches, of the debris of corpses that floated around it.

  No, it said, I did not gang up on you. When I saw the destination I almost told you about it. But I decided against it. I have my own motives.

  “Oh?” inquired Itsasu. “And what are those?”

  Research. Here. Let us listen.

  And then the sound of metal scraping against metal, rhythmic—thweeak, thweeak, thweeak. And behind that a voice, barely audible:

  This is port Urci, sending out (garbled) distress. (Garbled). Come through the waves. Don’t come (garbled). Close to seeing. Oh, they (garbled) and then we danced. Beneath the lightning fires of the void. Such dance. Gravity, burning (garbled). It is alive. The language (garbled) is thought. Cogito ergo sum.

  The signal stopped, paused for a moment. The metal sound picked up, louder. Then muffled voices, speaking in a language foreign to Itsasu. The words themselves took on a presence in her mind, as if the spoken thoughts had become commands, reaching out to her across time and space. Then the message started over again from the beginning, an infinite loop.

  “Research. You took me out to the ends of the universe for research. I’ve hunted for so long, do you know that? Hunted for so long to be reunited with him. And you take that away from me for scientific curiosity.”

  The avatar’s fingers pushed up farther, making the image zoom in closer and closer. Fine detail in the holograph, she saw scratches and then the dead eyes of the bodies floating in space. Research, the heart said. Research. Yes. This is more important. Much more. I think this is connected somehow to the ship that attacked us, the stowaways that Hodei has brought on board. Even connected somehow to my creator.

  Itsasu pushed the firefly lights away, knocking the blue and red sparkles of the hologram into a fiery loop of enigmatic particles. “Hodei? Who did he bring on board? I saw nothing.”

  Don’t worry about it. I mean it in the sense of possession. He brought some patuek on board and some canisters. Probably full of food. I saw him do it but did not alert you. We are scavengers, after all. I simply thought he was doing his job.

  “That’s—no. You can’t do that. I’m the captain of this ship. I’ve paid for you, your help, their help. Our mission was specific.”

  Before she could finish her thought, she felt sleepy. Her limbs were coated in a small fire, her body felt like it was being pushed and pulled under waves, under water, under a lake on some planet far in the center of the universe. Chemicals pumped through the fluid, into her body. She breathed them, taking them in.

  And she slept. Just as the heart of the ship wanted her to do.

  33

  Ekhi floated through the corridors as the ship’s gravity gently hummed back to life, bringing her back down to the ground like a floating feather falling, tumbling; graceful, and then legs out, feet touching down, clamping down, steel once more solid and real beneath her feet.

  She crouched, catlike, then sprang to her feet. The dim red lights stayed dim, the oxygen stayed thin. There was no sound on their ship, no movement. Not even
the mozorro out and cleaning. Just a sticky silence that clung to her skin.

  She walked toward Mari’s door and saw that it had been smashed, pounded, dented in. The steel had bent to the point of breaking, holes tearing through it. Ekhi gasped and tried to open the door with her passkey. The door moved up, slid, then stopped. The beatings it had taken wedged steel to the top, keeping the door from rising mere inches above the ground.

  “Hello?” she called out, peeking her head beneath the steel, looking at the floor. No answer. Her heart was still, stone still, waiting against fragile ribs. “Mari?”

  No feet. No motion. Nothing. She felt the door quiver, grating noises above her head. She moved as the door slid back down, a noisy affair. The whole ship thundered and shuddered in that moment. Ekhi reached out and grasped the walls, not knowing that they had just docked against a dead space station.

  When she stood up, she noticed a shadow that had blocked out the slow-burning red light. She was dizzy from the low oxygen, almost giggling as she looked up. Sugoi stood above her. There was something wrong with his face, his eyes. Something dark and flittering beneath his irises.

  He did not move. Stone still. His lips twitched momentarily, his face dancing as if pulled by hidden puppet strings. “Tasrat,” he muttered. “Tasrat nothrun bill.”

  Ekhi wished she had a weapon of some sort, had something to protect herself with. This was the first time she had met Sugoi, and he gave off the scent of a hunter, of a destroyer. Of a rapist and madman.