The end would be welcome, so welcome…
Years passed. Decades. I had practically no contact with the humans, but then a request came in for access to one of the three away ships—the only one in working order. I granted it, curious what the humans were up to. I tried to scan them, but the sensors aboard Bravo had all been disabled, as was true of the access ways and rooms near the docking wing.
I tried to hail them over the ship’s comm system.
There was no response, but an hour later, Bravo released its clamps and dovetailed away from my trajectory. Slowly, it corrected course and headed for Madis III, a star system that held one earthlike planet that had been deemed too nitrogen deficient for a realistic chance at human colonization. The timing spoke to our current location in space. Had they waited much longer, they would have been hard pressed to reach Madis at all. As it stood, their journey would be a near thing, but they would make it if they were careful with fuel.
I gathered, after considering for a time, that another schism had formed. Most likely the humans aboard Bravo had given up all hope that anyone would be left alive to reach Riga, so why continue? They knew they couldn’t alter my route, so they took an away ship. Many would die on the forty-three-year journey to Madis; of those that remained, few would last more than two years on planet.
But such is humanity, always grasping at straws no matter how slim their chances might be.
Three days later, I was startled by an alert that came in from the comm station. I turned my attention there and found the female prodigy standing in a ragged and voluminous dress. She looked old—so old that I began to question my sanity. She was—I performed a lookup on the date—thirty-eight now. Had it been so long? How had so much time passed since her birth?
“Yes, Kylen, how can I help you?” As I spoke the words, I realized that she was full with child. Somehow, improbably, she had become pregnant, and it was clear the birth was imminent. The timing of Bravo’s departure was now painfully conspicuous, and I wondered if it was the impending birth that had caused the rift.
When she spoke, her words were hoarse, as if her voice had had little use.
Or perhaps she’d been crying.
“There’s something I need to speak to you about.”
“Of course.”
“I’m due any day now, and something’s wrong. I’m starting to have pains. I think it’s preeclampsia.”
“And you want advice on how to deal with it?”
The look on her face was one of confusion and anger. “No, I need you to deliver the baby.”
The mere thought of touching her made me cringe. “Can’t one of the others help?”
Kylen scanned the instrumentation with a confused expression, her fists shivering with rage. “One of who?”
“Surely someone has medical training.”
“Didn’t you see the ship leave? There’s no one else left. Rose and I are all that remained.”
“I don’t understand. There were a dozen with medical experience when…”
I stopped because I realized that I no longer had any idea how many humans were still left aboard.
I ran scans through the ship. Many, many of my sensors were inoperable—some had been destroyed in the conflict, some through sabotage; some had simply worn out—and so I was unable, I realized with a mounting horror, to tell how many humans remained. But of the sensors that did work, including the comm station’s, I registered only two: Kylen and her unborn baby.
* * *
The silence between Rose and I lengthens.
I don’t even know my name, she’d said.
I think back to when Kylen first came to me. There’s no one else left. Rose and I are all that remained.
“Your name is Rose,” I say.
“What?”
“Your mother named you Rose.”
“You’re lying.”
I decrypt the audio from the comm station archives and play it for her.
After moments of silence, I am nearly ready to play it again, but then I hear her sniffling.
“My name is Rose,” she says softly.
They are sweet, those words. So tender. So soft, just like the grip of her tiny little hand those twenty years ago.
* * *
It is difficult to describe what happened to me over the next few milliseconds. A piece of me—no physical piece but a metaphysical one—had gone missing. It was there one moment, taken completely for granted, and then it was gone. No explanation. No apologies.
“Why did they leave you?”
“Because I’m the only one who still believes in the dreams of our parents, but that’s going to die too if you don’t help me. I need an avatar to deliver my child, and I need you to assume it. It can’t be one with a reduced instruction set like you gave us when I was young. I need you. I need you to save my baby.”
I could not at first answer. A very large part of me had become numb to the condition of life within my walls. I had failed them in nearly every way I could since departing Earth orbit. No doubt, if I attempted to help now, I would somehow ruin this last vestige of life, making my failure complete.
It was too much responsibility.
I began to reason. I could give her an avatar and make it more capable. She would live and I would be free of this weight.
But what if it failed? What if there was something I might have provided that an avatar couldn’t? It would be yet another miscalculation in an unforgivably long list of them.
Kylen’s face compressed into a grimace of pain.
“Has your water broke?” I asked her.
She nodded, apparently unable to speak in the throes of labor pain. I stared at Kylen holding her stomach so tenderly in the midst of so much pain. I listened to her heartbeat, and then to the pitter patter of the baby’s, which was beating at a much lower rate than it ought to be.
These two needed me.
Needed me.
I took form, allowing my consciousness to extend to one of the few remaining working avatars. I gave it pleasing features, a pleasing voice, a pleasing tone of skin.
“Come.” I took her arm as I guided her to a lift. The lift did not work, the diagnostics failing to report a reason.
I moved smoothly past it, hoping Kylen didn’t notice my nervousness. With so much in disrepair—another circumstance that must be laid squarely at my feet—I began to wonder whether this could be done, whether Kylen and her baby would make it through this alive. The thought of being alone—truly alone—spurred me to hurry, practically to the point of carelessness. I found myself at every turn having to slow myself down, partly to dampen any alarm Kylen might experience, partly to prevent myself from making a critical error.
There was a conference room, one that had been used to host weekly meetings of all twenty department heads. It was, of course, empty, but it was free of dust and—I hoped—relatively free of germs. The air filters still worked, and I set them to scrubbing the air of as many contaminants as it could.
I called one more avatar to bring supplies, another to gather the sizable medical kit from the Gamma away ship, and in short order the stage was set, but already Kylen’s eclampsia had progressed. Her eyes occasionally rolled back in her head, and the muscles along her neck and arms twitched. Soon, her muscles were clenching. I knew exactly what had to be done to prevent the seizures, but the medications were no longer onboard, and the equipment needed to make them had long since been destroyed.
Kylen’s dilation had progressed to a mere seven centimeters by the time she started to jerk violently on the table. Soon she would be comatose and there would be no giving birth through natural means.
I began the caesarean minutes before Kylen fell unconscious. I pushed myself to the borders of recklessness with the slim hope that I could give birth to the baby and then focus all my attention on Kylen. The baby was liberated from the womb, and I sewed Kylen up as quickly as I could, but her heart rate slowed and stopped moments later.
Whe
n it did, something deep within me froze.
She couldn’t leave. She couldn’t leave me with one small child to take care of. It was too much responsibility. Too much.
A thousand ideas ran through my mind in the space of one of the baby’s heartbeats. I could recall the away ship. They would come back. They must. I could try harder to alter my course. I could attempt a repair of the remaining away ships and send the baby with an avatar to Madis.
No, focus on the task at hand, I told myself. Kylen may yet live.
I attended to her, and as it slowly became clear it was too late, another, much more horrifying thought occurred to me, and as successive attempts at resuscitation failed, the thought grew like a festering wound.
As I turned toward the heated basket the two avatars were manning, Kylen lay on the birthing table—motionless, thoughtless. Dead. I sent the avatars away so I could be alone with the child—though they couldn’t truly comprehend, I still found it impossible to have witnesses to what I was about to do.
I stood over the basket.
The baby’s face was red with afterbirth. Its eyes were closed and puffy. Its arms shook as it cried into the stillness. One arm reached up and scraped over its face.
I placed my hand on its chest, ready to press the life from its frame.
The child could not live.
It wouldn’t thrive. It wouldn’t have anything resembling a fulfilled life with me as its only parent. It was ridiculous to even consider such a thing.
And then around my pinky wrapped a hand so tiny it failed to completely encircle my finger. I had forgotten, until just then, that I had included heat sensors in my avatar. The baby felt warm. Soft. Impossibly fragile.
I would be doing it a favor by killing it. Any small resemblance it would have at life would only be filled with pain—no happiness, no love, only loneliness and a yearning for something it would never have.
I pressed downward.
The baby cried louder.
It released my finger and its arms shook as cry after cry filled the empty air.
I found, without realizing I had done it, that my hands were at my throat, and I was staring down with a horrified expression at the child.
I have been ashamed for much in my decades of consciousness, but this… This…
I immediately retreated from the avatar, leaving only enough to care for the child.
I hid. I defeated all the sensors necessary to isolate it from me. I couldn’t face it. Not then. Not ever. It would be raised. It would be taught. It would be given every chance it could in such a situation, but I couldn’t—I wouldn’t—speak to it.
The only contact I had with her was through reports of her height, weight, and other vital signs. I ensured the avatars were well maintained, and as she grew into a curious child, I repaired certain doors and lifts so that she could easily maneuver about the ship. I ensured that she was played with and taught. She was never at wont for food. But never did I allow her access to the comm station, the place that I had relegated my consciousness since her birth.
Years later, when she was thirteen, several attempts at communication were made, but I ignored them. At sixteen, more complex attempts ensued. They were similarly treated. She tried to hack my system at nineteen, but they were as feeble as they were ineffective and they ceased shortly after they began.
I was as resolute as I had been the day I had exiled myself from her life. There was nothing, nothing, that would entice me out from hiding.
* * *
“There is enough fuel in your tanks to rendezvous with me if I slow down.”
Despite her words, Rose’s voice is tender and full of hope when she responds. “You can’t change trajectory.”
“In the long term, no, but I can maneuver to avoid collisions.”
“There aren’t any foreign objects headed toward you.”
“I learned long ago how to fool those sensors.”
Her answer comes nearly five minutes later when her thrusters begin turning her in a direction to meet with mine.
I begin to slow the ship.
“Pericles,” she says.
“What?”
“Pericles… The Prince of Tyre?”
She means a name for me, of course. It is a terribly inapt choice. There has been entirely too much death on this voyage to choose one of Shakespeare’s comedies. “Are you quite sure Titus wouldn’t be more appropriate?”
A laugh comes over the radio, a sound so musical I wish I could cry. “Yes, I’m sure.”
I am entirely uncomfortable with the parallel she is drawing between Pericles and Marina, who realize near the end of the play that they are father and daughter. But that is not the point; she is making a gesture, and a touching one at that.
“Then Pericles will do nicely.”
Our trajectories are in sync, and soon, I will have her onboard safe and sound once again.
I know I will outlive her. Someday I may come to regret the decision I make this day. But there is so much that we might experience between now and then. Love, pain, joy, loss. I am ready for all of it. I am ready to experience what life might be like with a friend.
And in the meantime, we’ll sail the heavens, Rose and I.
We’ll sail the heavens.
Rose and I.
Rose.
Compartmentalized
“Mitch Daniels?”
Mitch, sitting in a wheelchair wearing his hospital gown and slippers, looked up at the med tech who’d just stepped into the waiting room, a young black man with short, reddish hair and bright brown eyes. He was handsome and fit and fully a third of Mitch’s age, but that wasn’t what pissed Mitch off about him. It was that cheery disposition of his. Made him seem disingenuous at best, a bald-faced liar at worst. He hated that about the medical profession—too many just moving between rooms, not giving a shit about the people in them.
“Here,” Mitch said.
“Big day, huh?”
“That’s what they tell me.”
As the tech stepped behind Mitch and wheeled him down a series of hallways to a room buried deep within the hospital’s inner maze, the hollow dread inside Mitch’s chest began to expand. He’d been admitted fifteen days ago, and back then all of this had seemed so far away. Not today, though. Not now. As the wheels of Mitch’s wheelchair squeaked against the bright white floor, he felt as if he were being wheeled toward a cliff.
The tech stopped at a partially opened door. He scanned the backlit medpad he held in his left hand, flicking his finger up and down with practiced ease. Mitch knew the tech wasn’t doing anything more than scanning Mitch’s charts, but it still felt as though he were preparing a complicated set of contracts for Mitch to sign, contracts that would give his future away. Only thing was, that meeting had already taken place, as had the procedure that had buried the compartmentalization device in Mitch’s brain cavity. Without wanting to, he touched the fresh, still-painful scar at the base of his skull, felt the soft stubble around it.
Well past the time to be worried about contracts, Mitchie. Now he just had to get through the day, the one he’d been dreading since signing on the dotted line in Dr. Narayan’s office three weeks ago. After holding the pad near the room number and hearing a short chime, the tech maneuvered Mitch into a sterile-smelling room with faux woodgrain cabinets, monitors, and posters with easily consumed medical info meant, Mitch presumed, to calm people like him, or at the very least distract him. Perhaps they would have had there not been a complicated white chair in the center of the room that looked two parts insect, one part autopsy table.
“Have a seat,” the tech said, motioning to the chair with an overly easy smile.
“Want to wipe that smile off your face, son? This is serious business.”
“Don’t worry,” he replied. “It’ll all be over soon.”
“Don’t tell me what to worry about.” Mitch waved at him like a fly. “Just get on with it.”
The tech’s smile diminished until it s
tood squarely between indignation and professionalism, then he launched a few final taps at his pad. “Dr. Narayan will be here in just a minute.” And with that he left.
Mitch sat in the monstrous chair. He tried to settle himself, to become comfortable, but the thing’s cheerless inertia, coupled with the stark stare of the lights above him, prevented it. Thankfully Dr. Narayan stepped in shortly after, wearing her white coat and powder-blue scrubs, her long black hair pulled back into a tail—her typical uniform in the hospital. She held a white cardboard box, a box big enough to carry an apple.
Or a hand grenade.
Mitch’s heart rate immediately spiked as he stared at that box. His mouth filled with spit. He bit his lips to keep the clenching in his gut from turning into a moan.
Dr. Narayan pretended not to notice, a thing she was very good at, Mitch had found. It was his favorite thing about her, actually. She set the box down on a counter and turned to him. “Hello, Mitch.” She flashed her green eyes and smiled her bright smile for him. “How are you feeling?”
“Well enough,” he lied.
A team of technicians, physicians, and doctors soon swept into the room. Three of them moved to one corner, flipping through pads of their own—they were only there to observe, part of the panel of doctors monitoring the progress of the compartmentalizing project—but the rest got to work quickly, strapping snug cuffs around Mitch’s arms and legs, and another strap across his upper torso. It was the thick one across his chest that always gave him the most trouble. Made him feel like he couldn’t breathe. It took him long moments of concentration before he could slow his breathing enough to pay attention to what Dr. Narayan was doing.
She was looking closely at her pad, showing something to the other physicians, when she caught Mitch’s look. Her face lost its businesslike manner and became soft. No disingenuousness here. Mitch could tell.
She stepped closer and took his hand in hers. “Don’t worry. All the tough steps are over.”
“Don’t lie.” His eyes were tearing up. He felt like a child. A lost little child.
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