An End

by Paul Hughes

  Fleur glared at Mother, whose eyes betrayed the obvious relish with which she was stringing them along. The little girl sat in her tiny chair, her hand placed lovingly on top of Hank’s new emulated hands, uneasily clasped on the table before him, on which was printed a circular pattern of dancing barnyard animals, all linked hand-to-hand, or hoof-to-feather, rather. Mother patted Hank and gravely rested her chin on her fist, shrugging with feigned indecision.

  [too efficient. that’s the only way to explain it.]

  “Just tell us what you want to say. Stop these games.”

  Satisfied that she had stirred enough emotion in Fleur for now, Mother smiled widely, crossed her arms on her pre-pre-pre-pubescent chest.

  [you ran when you found out what you were doing to those worlds, little flower. you hid on a prison galleon bound for the outer and hoped that we’d never be able to find you. if it weren’t for whistler and seven and eight and nine, you’d have escaped with the rest of the vermin.]

  Whistler and Nine sat side-by-side, each flickering in perfect projected unease. Neither could look up and face the gaze of Fleur.

  “They brought me back unharmed.” Fleur instinctively flexed her “new” left hand, constructed from an emulated parts clone, raped from another Fleur to fit the only Fleur that truly mattered. “So you must have found another planet. Another rogue world.”

  [something like that.]

  “Just fucking tell me!”

  A motion too fluid and too fast for Fleur to comprehend and they were alone in the room, Whistler and Nine and Hank vanished, the only hint of their existence the tiny silver spherical emulation projectors that dropped into the children’s chairs in which they had been sitting. The balls rolled around the concave (convex?) depressions meant for human posterior regions, then fell through as the chairs, the neon green carpet, the room itself faded, dissolved. Fleur and Mother were left alone in the true Center Earth, which appeared from the fog of illusion that Mother had created for her guests.

  They hung in the center of an expanse that dwarfed the Vegas tunnel, its walls lined with machines of limited sentience that skittered about insectlike, gigantic machines the size of mountains roaring along on Mother’s orders of processing the interior of the planet. Fleur’s throat closed in as she saw what the majority of the machines were working on. Mother remained in her child form, and playfully swam over to where the silver balls that were Whistler, Nine, and Hank floated. She grabbed all three and placed them in the pocket of her overalls.

  [like my ship?]

  Ship was an understatement. A vessel the size of a continent was being constructed out of the carcass of planet Earth in its very interior. Hundreds, thousands of Mother’s machines swarmed over its surface, which sparkled with countless welding blasts, shrieks of metal, the reverberating clang of miles-long segments of the vessel slamming into place as the machines hurriedly constructed it.

  Fleur was wordless. She had seen the vessels of the Extinction Fleet, but never anything like this. She had only heard of one larger vessel—

  [zero’s vessel was bigger, yes. almost the size of an entire system. but it just didn’t have the vitality of mine. of ours.]

  “Where—Where are we going?”

  Mother swam over to Fleur, held her hand gently. Her smile was wide and terrifying in its implications. Before she said a word, Fleur knew her answer.

  [we’re going home, little flower.]

  Zero tried not to be disturbed by the line of black-clad men that walked in silence on either side of him. The Stranger was at his side, walking at his slow, exhausted pace. Zero was beginning to suffer the adverse effects of gravity re-entry. His body ached for the fluid enclosure of the bowl, the warm comfort of liquid space. The only sound in this passage was the shuffled steps of hundreds of feet. The men walked in silence down the slightly-canted corridor, constructed entirely of matte plastic? metal? something, curving upward so that he couldn’t see the end.

  “Your Machine has been dissembled and absorbed into—” The Stranger paused, Zero feeling the search for the correct term (essence singularity soul parent) “—Heaven.”

  Zero’s watched as the Stranger reacted to his expression of confusion, and found it reflected in the man’s face. He stopped walking. “Heaven?”

  “Our creator... and benefactor. You will experience it. It is ineffable. Difficult to name.”

  “And you? What should I call you?”

  Again, that disarming grin. “Stranger will do. My name doesn’t matter.” A reassuring squeeze of the shoulder, and they walked on, flanked on both sides by black and silence. Soon, they came to the end of the corridor, which opened out into an impossible expanse that took Zero’s breath away, almost quite literally.

  The walkway extended out to an airlock, at which was docked a shiver vessel of uncertain design. The airlock was the only blemish on the surface of a clear globe, the walls of which were constructed of miles of transparent, glassy plastic. On the other side of the clear shield was an enclosed solar system, millions of miles wide. At its center, shimmering weakly, was a dying star. Zero turned to Stranger, his face broadcasting his amazement at the phenomenon that he was witnessing.

  “It was a binary system. When your Extinction Fleet first made an appearance, we were able to hide one of our stars here. This vessel is all we have left.”

  Zero touched the miles of glass before him, which greeted his fingertips with a cool, static attraction. The airlock door cycled open beside him.

  “You have the technology to place a solar system inside of a vessel?”

  Stranger scoffed. “Not the entire system. Just one star and forty planets. The others were left behind, where Mother’s fleet eventually got to them. We’ve been hiding in the Outer ever since your genocide spread this far.”

  Zero slumped against the glass in realization. Stranger made no move to help him up this time, but stood behind him, arms crossed. Zero looked at the assembled black-robed men standing in formation on either side of the airlock, watching him. Silent. Expressions of such loss on their faces...

  “No women. Mother’s fleet—”

  “Your fleet, Zero. Of course, you never knew. Your Fleur never knew. You were just following orders. The virus killed them all, even after we escaped with half of the system under shield. The catalyst was at work even before the final seal was welded into place.”

  “I never—”

  “Come on.” Stranger motioned toward the open airlock and the shiver vessel beyond, embedded within miles of solid glass.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Heaven.”

  Zero warily stepped through the airlock and into the confines of the shiver vessel’s passenger area, where two vacuum chairs sat behind the transparent front needle of the ship. Stranger took a seat, and motioned for Zero to do the same as the lock doors cycled shut behind them. They were alone in the vessel, the men of sadness left on the other side of the door. Zero could feel their touch, though, the subtle undercurrent of hatred that permeated every breath.

  Before them, through the front of the shiver, the dazzling visual dance of miles of protective shield glass stretched, bending the light of the dying star at the center of this impossible expanse into infinite prisms and rainbows. A bark from Stranger and the vessel responded to his guttural language, firing up the spinners inside of its phase engine, resonating the vessel until Zero felt certain that his teeth were being jarred loose from his skull. He had always hated the resonance of shivers, that sickening vibration that at once tickled your entire body and made you nauseous as it created that perfect phase shift that could cut through anything solid. Whenever he was in a shiver vessel, Zero always felt like he was the slug in the barrel of a common shiver gun, which, in essence, he was.

  “How thick is the shield?”

  “Thinner than you think. We’ll reach Heaven in no time.”

  With a wave of his hand, Stranger signaled the vessel and it was off, phasing at Light X through th
e globe of glass that protected all that remained of his homeworlds. Zero sat back in the vacuum seat, gritting his teeth against that uncertain shift from solid to near-liquid. He much preferred the comfort of the bowl, the complete immersion in phased gelatin. Traveling in a shiver was the dry-fuck of interstellar travel: plenty of motion, but little pleasure.

  Stranger caught a bit of this thought, and shot Zero a sly smile. “You miss her, don’t you?”

  The vibration of the shiver was almost too much for Zero to take, an aural onslaught, but he heard Stranger clear enough. “Who?”

  “The Catalyst. Poor boy, you loved her.”

  Zero was silent, but his mind broadcast all Stranger needed to know.

  “We’ll have to kill her, you know. Nothing personal.”

  Zero turned. “Right. Nothing personal.”

  Stranger’s eyelids drew together in suspicion, but he said nothing. And he heard nothing; Zero’s mind was far too shielded now to read. He watched the needle before them, and the swirl of primaries blending to tertiaries.

  Fleur, where are you?

  Where am I?

  Fleur’s heart lurched into her throat, so sudden and unexpected was her realization. Just a young woman, floating here in the void within the planet that had once held a childhood, a hope, a little stream and ferns and wind blowing in the valley, peace, sunshine. An awful mockery of that childhood swam beside her in this incomprehensible world, a little girl of five, wearing bright pink corduroy overalls and holding in her hand three silver spheres.

  Where am I?

  Mother smiled that smile, tossed the three projectors to Fleur, who mindlessly caught them and held their metallic warmth in her new left hand, still under warranty. [you’re afraid, little girl.] Mother did not realize the ridiculousness of her statement, a child referring to someone five times her age as “little girl.” But of course, she was ancient, as ancient as the stars, or at least an ancient as those who had conquered the stars before Earth had solidified from the detritus of the galaxy.

  “Yes.”

  [good. you have every right to be afraid. we’re going to meet some people who won’t exactly welcome us with open arms, people who sent me away a long time ago.]

  A machine approached at breakneck speed, hovered dangerously close for a moment, long enough to tousle both Fleur and Mother’s curly locks.

  “Bring it back. The room. Whistler and Hank. And Ze—Nine. Nine.”

  Mother grinned savagely. [herr freud would be proud, love.]

  “Bring it back.” Another machine was fast approaching, this one hauling a nondescript metal phase drive segment that was easily the size of a mountain.

  [but don’t you find it beautiful? all of these loyal workers, doing exactly as i tell them? this awful planet reconstituted into something beautiful. his name is gary.]

  Fleur was confused, but the confusion was replaced with fear as the machine towing the phase drive passed, close enough to spin her around in its wake. All around them, countless gigantic machines were coming and going.

  [actually, the name is guerra, but he prefers being called gary, so that’s what i call him.]

  “Who?”

  [our ship. gary. would you like to meet him?]

  “Do I have any choice?”

  Mother grinned. [you’re learning, little flower. you’ll do just fine.]

  She grabbed Fleur’s hand, and away they flew, toward Gary the warship.

  It was cold here at the center of the planet, much colder than Fleur had anticipated, and the speed of their flight only heightened the sensation, caused gooseflesh to erupt on her exposed forearms, caused her breaths to come in gasps as her body

  shivered, he remembered, as the current drew them together, drew him within. That hushed gasp, the lines of her eyebrows furrowing and the feel of fingernails tracing gently at first and then with increasing pain as they began to carve faint furrows into his shoulders and back. Frantic dance of flesh as the waves consumed them both, his eyes opening for a moment to gaze upon that dark spill of curls, a halo around her head and she whispered something in that perfect moment, whispered that word that had haunted him now for months and years and decades and haunted him, just a simple word, whispered in that perfect climax, that perfect moment where he was lost in waves of

  “Heaven.”

  Zero snapped from the shiver-induced reverie, that half-sleep that so many passengers in shivers had reported, that inexplicable torpor that accompanied the vibration of phased travel. Stranger looked at him disdainfully, as if the sleep reflex was below him.

  “What?”

  “Heaven approaches. Or rather, we approach Heaven.”

  Zero remembered their vessel’s exit from the glass field, but not much beyond. Their shiver was now being escorted by an armada of larger vessels, some shaped like atmospherics, and others definitely spacers. Zero stretched to look out the rear of the vessel, and found that there were already many more orbiting spheres behind the shiver than in front. They had passed without incident through much of the enclosed solar system, apparently drawing a crowd as they passed.

  “You needn’t worry about our escorts. They’re just observing.”

  Something in Stranger’s voice resonated with its own undercurrent... Zero tasted distrust in that statement, and he caught a brief unshielded image of an accusatory finger pointed at a man in white, or perhaps just a white beard, a soundtrack of that guttural bark that these creatures used as a language. Stranger was definitely hiding something... But Zero could sense already that not all was well under this glass sky.

  One of the smaller vessels swooped dangerously close to the shiver, then fell away, phase drives leaving a contrail of blurred space behind it. Stranger looked intently ahead, ignoring the display. Zero, however, watched the smaller vessel move to rejoin the formation of similar vessels that it had been flying with. A brilliant flash and it was cut apart in mid-maneuver by a corvette that came in fast and low. Several destroyers moved to intercept the corvette, and another group moved in close around the shiver. The world inside the snowglobe erupted in a lightshow.

  Stranger barked orders at the vessel, which increased speed and rocketed toward the sphere closest to the trapped star. All around them the world was lances of fire and phase and shiver.

  “Just observing?”

  “Quiet,” Stranger growled back. “We’ve had some trouble since your arrival.”

  “Some trouble? All is not well in paradise?”

  [paradise?] the word slammed into Zero’s mind with horrifying force. [it’s not been a paradise since the Exile sent us your precious little flower. how dare you speak of paradise when you have the blood of an entire species on your hands?]

  The words echoed through Zero’s mind, a sickening sensation much like the shiver. “it’s a civil war. You don’t know what to do with me.”

  “That’s right. We’re killing ourselves out there,” he indicated the skirmish taking place around their vessel “Because of you.”

  The shiver continued toward the first satellite of the dying star, flanked on all sides by massive destroyers. Corvettes and fighters still swooped in and out of their path, but they were for the most part instantly cut apart by the shiver’s escorts.

  The shiver slowed as it entered the atmosphere of the first planet. The surface below them was bereft of signs of life, a black icescape on the side that they approached. Their destroyer escorts stayed in orbit, and the shiver was followed by an array of smaller atmospheric vessels. Zero strained to see the lights of cities or airstrips, but was disappointed. As far as he could tell, there was nothing constructed by humans on the surface of this planet.

  “It’s beneath the surface, at the planet core.”

  Zero understood then, of course Heaven was at the planet core. Where had they found Mother when the planet had begun to cool and die? The planet core. These creatures were not surface-dwellers; they preferred the privacy of the interior.

  “Something like that.�
� Stranger folded his hands across his chest.

  A great gap opened in the darkness, illuminated from within, an immense silver mouth stretching into the planet interior. The shiver fell inside, and the mouth closed. With one swallow, the vessel plummeted into the distant cousin of the Vegas Gate. Pearly gates or not, Zero was on his way to Heaven.

  Foreboding, suffocating sense of foreboding.

  Higher and higher, caught in the swirls and eddies of the new atmosphere at the center of the planet, hovering like eagles, linked hand to tiny hand, two human forms gracefully swimming through air to the warship that was named War but preferred to be called Gary. Mother laughed, the child that she had become laughed, and Fleur cringed as she heard the depth of the decay, echoing forever through the tumult of a machine ocean. Mother was dying, and dying quickly. The destabilization of that presence that had permeated the entire galaxy of her exile in these last hundred-thousand years was evidenced in that child’s blissful laughter. Fleur shivered from the cold and from the depth of her despair.

  They approached the warship from beneath. Machines were affixing the final phase drive to the aft of the vessel. Countless automaton assemblages of stone and metal and fiery shift swam in schools through the current of Center Earth, crawling over Gary and putting finishing touches on his superstructure. Mother deftly avoided the dutiful slaves, and her grasp on Fleur’s hand tightened as they floated up to the underside lock.

  [gary!] Mother shouted with all of her mind. [let us in!]

  US? WHO’S “US”?

  [me and fleur, gary. let us in!]

  FUCKIN’ A.

  Mother visibly blushed, much to Fleur’s amazement. [gary hasn’t been properly trained yet.]

  The underside lock began to cycle open. Mother towed Fleur along behind her as they rose up into Gary, who was spouting a string a silverthought expletives into the void.

  As the lock slid shut below them, Fleur took in her surroundings. She had expected a cavernous interior, but it would appear that most of the bulk of Gary was taken up with the phase drives and megascale mechanics that would launch them into the Outer. The room into which they floated was another simple construct of Mother’s mind, a suburban living room with a comfy couch, beanbag chairs, even a pool table and wet bar. Instead of a cockpit, Fleur found herself in domestic tedium. Instead of a control panel, Fleur found a twenty-seven-inch television. As Mother descended and as her feet touched the shag carpet, Fleur could have sworn she heard music. Elevator music.