by Paul Hughes
His superiors found out about Berlin’s involvement after she struck, after she was captured. They had no intention of letting him off the damaged planet. He would have died in the cold and the dust if he hadn’t found the photographer Task and his machine lover Elle. They tried to stop it all, tried to warn Hannon of the contamination. They were caught in the phase flux and followed Maire’s exile craft to Earth, where it this all began in earnest, where eons of waiting culminates in a man, a gun, a child, a desert.
Forty thousand years she waited in that cave.
Task died soon after the crash from his injuries. Berlin’s hand was crushed, became infected. His mind and body toxic, but she didn’t care. She had all she needed: code. The planet wasn’t empty; she made men of monkeys.
The mind
Simmering until fruition, sleeping for millennia, sleeping with intent, letting her evolution spread. She recovered that which she had lost, recovered and augmented. She waited, taste of Berlin on her lips, in her blood. She fed from him as she would later feed from Reynald: soul, code, rebirth. Hibernation.
out of the reach of our sea
Believe?
that she walked through the impressionist streets a wraith, marveling in all that she had spawned: thousands, millions, billions. She looked for him, felt him there, somewhere, that old soul with the stigmata of white. She walked for years, seduced and ravaged, fed upon and found him outside of a jewelry shop, arguing with the mistress Hiffernan.
Followed, whispered as stars falling in the night sky, whispered to his blood and he knew, he knew. What. Futures and distances and silver. She whispered.
She waited for that moment, as she had lifetimes away. Hid through three major conflicts, hesitant, uncertain, but knowing that it was not yet time; the world could not yet produce what she needed for completion, for purpose, for infection. She waited until they made machines like men, and it began. With the painter’s help, it began.
Decades of construction, hidden from man. Angels and gates and tunnels. They fought their surface wars, struggled over black lines on a map, experimented with their atoms and their planets and their politics. She hid and built and waited.
In those days between the death of everything and the rebirth of less than humanity, it hurtled into damnation and spawned and its progeny spread outward and outward and consumed everything in their path, and before Omega, it judged that all that it had created was good and redeemable and it sent the newborns back into the blackness to save those unfortunate enough to have remained behind.
They would live forever. In the ocean of silver fire, Omega would be the salvation and the nirvana and the extinction and the hereafter.
Honeybear! Honeybear Brown! Cuddliest little bear on our side of town! Honeybear! He’s our friendliest friend!
Lilith giggled like a child when I sang that.
My quarters on Arch were cramped. Everyone’s were. But she’d sneak in and we’d make love and talk for hours. Forbidden, but yeah. We didn’t care. Knew that someone might figure it out eventually, but didn’t care. Long before the resistance began to weaken. We’d spend those hours unshielded, wrapped in each other, talking and laughing about Honeybear Brown and memories. Other memories. Laughing so that we wouldn’t think. About. What we were doing. What we were sent out here to do.
She told me of life behind her gates and I told her of life outside her gates. What we remembered of a world now dead, of a time now dead.
We figured out how humans fit together to make one.
She’d tell me stories that she made up and dreamt: rain and marbles, paint and coffee. A betrayal, time, people wrapped in monsters, flying machines through yesterday, stealing souls and sometimes taking time, taking time to sit on a rusty swingset next to a mountain, something buried beneath, tunnels and stars.
Sometimes her stories scared me.
She told me about Nan. She missed her like I missed my mother.
She’d hide behind the pillow, quickly peek out, Hunter!, and I’d laugh like an idiot. She’d do it again; I’d laugh again. Remember me like that. Please don’t forget me. Us.
I don’t know what she saw in me that she didn’t see in the others. I don’t know why she let me in. Never felt so vulnerable, such surrender. Never let anyone that far in before, and now
We found such beautiful stillness in those moments, just Us. None of the confusion of our purpose, none of the war, the flight, the silver. Those are the moments that I remember when I close my eyes. Hers is the face I see. Hers is the heart I feel beating in my own chest. Quickly, now. Accelerated. Because
Exhale.
I now know that at the end of the war, Jean and my father found the entrance. I know that Maire sent Whistler to transport them to her, and I know that she changed them. They would be the first of many.
I know she whispered to them in that voice like wind and
They oversaw the Fleet modification, the construction of the Compounds on each continent, the mass-production of angels. They readied the populace for the realization that they had a greater purpose, and that purpose involved submission, war, sacrifice. They were the men people blamed when the female babies started dying, and the world realized that it would all end within a generation.
End set in motion, Maire placed my father on the flagship of the advance force she sent to Hannon’s system. She hid Reynald in a military hospital, and sent for him when it was time to create Lilith. Their daughter, my Love, the Catalyst of the Sixth Extinction.
Berard’s story broke an already-broken heart. How some could have known and not acted... I know that the silver was strong, but how could they not have killed her? Why must I be the executor of that act? After so many have died, after this extinction complete, silver now seeded throughout our known universe, dripping beyond into times and times, after such loss, after I’ve killed my
Berard assured me that the galleon was running as fast as it could from my pursuers. We’d find someplace out there to hide. Had to. Failure was no option. We ran.
We failed, of course.
The hardest part is the fact that I’d gotten used to the idea of forever.
i do know, and you know, too...
Please rest now, knowing that I’ll join you soon enough. Be still; wait for me.
Three destroyers, a corvette, and something still coming at us through the stream... They arrived in-system with a flash and my heart sunk. Galleons couldn’t outrun Fleet vessels in real space. We knew that; they knew that. Galleons have few if any weapons. We were unarmed, outrun, surrounded.
Funny how time pauses in those moments, in this moment, how the mind calms, the clouds recede, all becomes clarity and truth. I knew in that moment that we’d be separated, but our paths would converge again. Someday, somehow.
Whistler was surprisingly polite.
There was nothing we could do. The corvette docked. We met them in the hangar. Berard, his officers, myself. Lilith stayed in the sick bay.
Seeing Seven wasn’t like looking into a mirror.
Hello, Hunter.
I remember a print of a painting. Not the mother, as everyone knows, but the mistress, although I didn’t know it at the time. Animal rug. Wolf? White dress, white girl. She looked so sad. Eyes empty like
Whistler held his hand out to shake mine. I didn’t accept. He grinned and let his arm fall to his side.
He explained that Seven would be my replacement. I wasn’t to be killed, but sent away. I hadn’t expected that. He asked where Lilith was and I said that she was hidden on another galleon, although I knew he could feel her, knew that he would find her.
The destroyers outside opened fire and took out one of Berard’s other two galleons.
Still hidden?
They directed me to the corvette, took me outside to the waiting surprise that had arrived in-system. Something big. I felt Lilith’s touch, her fear, her desperation. I tried to reassure her but couldn’t. I didn’t know how long it would be before I saw her again, if ever. Tried to reassu
re myself but couldn’t. Just tried to stop thinking, the dead painter on one side, the ghost of myself on the other, draped in black, eyes cold and
It arrived with a silent fanfare, a machine the size of a solar system, something special Mother had created just for me when she realized what I was doing, when she realized that I had a little more resistance than my father, that I had thrown her jihad off-track if even for a little while. There it was: Machine, and it scared the hell out of me.
Too tired to fight, to weak to resist. The silver onset had done more than ravage my body.
please don’t let this
They’d take Lilith from Berard’s ship and place her on another destroyer. Seven would become me. He would ensure that the jihad moved forward, ever forward, spreading the silver amidst, eventually making it to Hannon’s system and ending them all.
The corvette was but a particle to Machine.
Penetration, insertion, docking. They took me to the center.
Eight was there. Mirror after mirror, but no true
Crucifixion.
The bubble was bigger than a destroyer, and at its center they gently, gingerly removed my clothing, affixed bindings to my arms and legs. Whistler was always in good cheer. I was silent except for breathing, heartbeat, whispers between
I didn’t fight. I couldn’t. I felt her, knew. There with me. Tears wept for me. But I couldn’t fight. The restraints were painless.
This is Machine. This is your forever home.
Walkway withdrew and the painter and ghosts left the chamber. A heartbeat echoes from walls miles apart.
The bubble sea began to flood from the bottom of the chamber. Slowly, faster, faster. I strained at first against that tide, closed eyes and mouth and held breath until my temples throbbed, lungs screamed out, but in the end it was useless. I resigned myself to that. I opened my eyes in the shimmer of phased glass and took a breath and saw
Machine glistening with the churn of phase, preparing for the beginning of an exile and
Whistler’s corvette departing from Machine’s hangar and
Berard’s lesser galleon flying at it and
Berard’s ship itself blinking from the system to escape and
the lesser galleon crushing Whistler’s corvette against Machine’s phased hull and
bodies spinning off into space, erupting and
destroyers on Catalyst target trajectory and
i felt
her
safe, for now, in Berard’s galleon, running away
and
Machine began.
The shudder of a million phase drives, each and every particle of my being dissembled, wrapped in warm viscous glass, ripped apart and placed tenderly back together, that tickle, that annoying tickle everywhere, everything. A vessel the size of
I faded into the stars, into tomorrow and yesterday on a path into uncertainty. All I knew was that we were going far, going fast, going away from Lilith, away from Earth, into the deep Outer. No aliens, no robots, no things that go bump in the night, but ultimate terror at the realization of my isolation. This was the beginning of my forever exile, ordered by a woman now a child, ordered out of spite and frustration because I tried to stop her from ending a species.
Stretched out far beyond body, mind, soul, stretched beyond that vessel of glass and rock, metal forged from planets and asteroid belts. One with everything, yet solitary in that void.
Memory and desire, an ocean of scattered, shattered images: arch of eyebrow, line of nose, colors of eyes: forevers and hands, long lithe fingers, tips tracing my cheek. Lips. And. Smoothness of cheek: hers. and philtrum, the way the lips part, the way lip to gum to teeth: smile. Neck. Collar bones and the space between breasts, the skin above her heart, precious, accelerated heart, that weapon that I denied, that weapon I loved. Love. Will
Screaming, crying out, but there was no one.
Given years to ponder eyes, given decades to wonder in those eyes: futures. One. and I
How much of myself did I hold in that stillness between our gazes?
long-winded, esoteric. self-indulgent
but what more do I have?
I remember memories not my own. Coffee and marbles and cigarettes. Discussions of subjunctive case, sub-human species, something about a pillow, cheek-biting, and robots that complained about films.
I know now that Berard ordered one of his galleons to ram the Whistler corvette. Ultimate sacrifice by men I never knew, never will. They died to save my Lilith, to save the
The shudder of a billion phase drives. Decentralized soul. Faster than light, out and north, as the stars go, toward that single wish. Sense of nonsense, the mind expands to embrace, yet there is no one there, no one forever out there.
Felt her fading, that touch... That touch faded. Until. lost.
Alone: screaming because I didn’t know how to stop.
c: format c.
I don’t know who I am anymore.
i think she’s perfect.
when she’s here, i’m really here. when she leaves, a part of me leaves with her, that splinter of my eternal being that has hidden within her beautiful heart forever, and has finally returned after so long away. we resonate as one.
i know that someday we won’t have this distance dividing us, these difficulties keeping us apart. i know each time that i look into her eyes that this time it is forever. i am patient. i can’t imagine a lifetime without her, now that i’ve found her.
she fell asleep in my arms, and i followed her willingly, but not before studying every inch of her face, impressing each line around her ancient eyes, the bullethole dimple, the shape and feel of lips, the arch of eyebrow, the warmth of exhalation. so warm under that comforter, bodies curled together, limbs intertwined. i felt her breathing regulate, saw the flicker of her eyes behind closed lids, fell asleep with the girl i love in a perfect moment of peace.
this is nothing like i’ve ever known, and i can’t wait for our next moment.
i see forevers in her eyes.
Shudder of a trillion phase drives, and I realized the depth of my loss.
I knew that Mother would send someone else to get Lilith. The loss of Whistler and my ghosts wouldn’t stop her. She’d make someone else, send them in a faster ship, hunt that galleon down. She’d take her time, do it right this time. She had me out of the equation now, but her daughter was still loose. The most important piece of the jihad was somewhere between stars and times. I thanked Berard, hoped he knew. Hoped he’d take care of Lilith for as long as he could. I knew that Mother would get her eventually; I just had to find a way to escape from Machine before it was too late.
my silence is my self defense
Machine eventually severed my restraints, allowed me to swim free. There was nowhere to go; I was no threat.
He wasn’t the best conversationalist. I’d ask questions that he couldn’t or wouldn’t answer. He’d give answers that I couldn’t or wouldn’t believe. He had faith in Mother’s plan. He was friendlier than Gary.
I found numbness in those years.
Wondered what she was doing, if she was safe, if she’d been captured, if they had made the final attack on the “alien” homeworld. I didn’t know at the time that my father’s fleet had been the first wave, and that as a result of his discovery and attack, the “aliens” had hidden a star and half of their planets in a systemship. I didn’t know at the time that fate would bring our paths together in a very palpable collision.
I know now that during those vague and silent monthsyearsdecades, Whistler and ghost Nine caught up with Berard’s galleon, fought the crew to the death. They found Lilith on the bridge, about to activate the destruct sequence. A heart breaks to think that she would take her own life. A heart breaks to know that I took her life with my own hands, and she lays here in my arms, blood now tacky brown, lips parted as if she wants to say something, but eyes closed in sleep, eternal sleep. I’ve killed her.
Mother’s plan had changed. She no long
er wanted a trusted angel to oversee the jihad. She got greedy. She wanted her daughter back, and she wanted to go to find Hannon and kill him herself in a ship named War, with a painter, a cowboy, a ghost. She wanted vengeance. She was dying, as she is now, each moment growing a little younger, feeding from this desert plain, the silver within my dying body, the silver that whispers to her even now: purpose. completion. an end.
kissing the life into something that’s already died
When she reached to activate destruct, they shot off her hand.
Precious cargo: Catalyst. Maire was a jealous mother. She wanted her little flower returned.
Slipping into madness. Strength through calm, confidence. No room for weakness, emotion, showing that emotion. The weak show emotion. The most poignant struggle: devotion to what seemed a lost cause, drowning within phase and something so much more. Never gave up hope, although voices commanded from the space behind eyes. Grasped to that which was ineffable: memory, cherished memory. Wound. To wound. Me.
Would I have taken my own life, given something more than a bubble, an ocean, a Machine voice?
Hold on... So tightly to those memories, of the moments, the sighs, the
To know that I killed her... To know that a fragment of me shot her hand off. Did he love?
How the work suffers for lack of clarity. How these final moments seem so trivial, not a fitting testament at all to a love that spanned decades and souls and something so much more than words. Ours is the story of a plague; we were the lost soldiers; mine are the tainted lips; ours is the broken love, spreading this contagion through the night. It is almost over.
The child looks younger.
Frantic now because I can feel its grip tightening. Silver. Suffocation. Crawling. It whispers.
They shot off her hand and took her home. They left Berard’s vessel to collapse upon itself.
I can only imagine her fear, her confusion. Going home to a world now dead, now empty of all life except the child sleeping at its center, the machines she made in those centuries, hollowing out the planet to create Guerra, and a cowboy named Hank. Fictional character, but she made him real. Twisted mind of a broken child playing god: let’s build a cowboy.