Shattered Light

by Fredrick Niles

  “It’s just…been a while, ya know?”

  Raquel looked around. Apparently, the city they had just docked in was called Glenhold. Byzzie had said that it was the capital of Desia, but judging from what Raquel could see, she found that hard to believe. It wasn’t that the buildings were dilapidated or in need of repair or anything. The city was just so..flat. The region itself was full of dips and rises, but the buildings were squat and low to the ground. Not a single skyscraper was in sight.

  The woman tilted her head, then reached down and grabbed her own clump of dirt. “High amounts of organic material…” She looked around at the flat ground and dense vegetation. “…Probably not much for bedrock.” She dropped the clump back to the ground and wiped her hands on her grey cargo pants. “I wouldn’t mind slamming into this place at 300 miles per hour.”

  Being a former member of the PUC’s special forces division, both Nadia and her teammate Kit—who was also a member onboard the Leopold—had bio-mechanically enhanced circulatory, muscular, neural, and skeletal systems that allowed them to survive massive impacts with the ground when making orbital drops. The Drop Pods that contained them did a pretty good job of venting and converting most of the energy from the impact, but if it weren’t for the special soldiers’ enhancements their insides still would have turned to jelly.

  “Yeah, but this place probably has a pretty high water table,” Kit said coming up from behind her. Kit was a compact dark-complexioned man with tight-cropped black hair. He was swinging a duffle bag over his shoulder as he approached the pair of women. “50/50 you’d end up in a lake or pond or underground river or something.”

  “Such a party killer,” Nadia said, shaking her head.

  Raquel began to question the phrasing of ‘party killer’ but decided against it. She ended up settling on, “How’s the new augmentation working out?”

  Kit had recently had his hand blown off in the fight onboard the Leopold and while it couldn’t be replaced, Byzzie had helped him fit a utility augmentation over his wrist.

  Raquel had been wounded herself, taking two sharp and bony limbs through the fleshy part of her right shoulder. She had lucked out though. Aside from a persistent throbbing and the fear of the wound taking any sort of recoil from a rifle, she maintained full mobility. Compared to Kit and Hector, she had gotten off pretty lightly, all things considered.

  “Good,” he said, raising his right arm. The dull matte-black stump protruded from his shirt-sleeve like a metal version of an arm, except it had no hand or fingers. “I’m just glad I haven’t electrocuted myself with it yet.”

  “What all does it-” but Raquel’s question was interrupted by a massive arm being flung over her and Nadia’s shoulders from behind.

  “There a place to get a bite to eat around here?” said a voice heavy with liquor from behind them. It belonged to King, the ship’s mechanic who—out of the entire crew—had taken their former pilot Hector’s death the hardest. “I’ve had nothing to eat but ketchup-and-whiskey soup for the last two weeks and my digestive system has turned into something resembling a water park.”

  “Gross,” Raquel said, shaking off the man’s arm. “And I know you know this, but I feel I need to say it anyway: the whiskey isn’t adding any nutritional value to the ketchup.”

  “On the contrary,” King shot back. “I’m adding nutritional value to the whiskey.” He reached up and tapped his bald head with a single index finger. “That’s some big-brain shit right there.”

  “If you say so,” said Raquel. She turned towards Nadia. “I am hungry. You two ever been here before?”

  Raquel noticed an uneasy glance exchanged between her and Kit and felt a chill of unease creep down her back. Chances were that the two former SEUs had been here before. And when they had, they had probably left dozens of corpses in their wake.

  “There’s gotta be something in town,” Nadia said, breaking the awkward silence. Kit had turned his head to the left and seemed to be looking at nothing in particular. “Let’s go see if we can scrounge something up.”

  “C’mon King,” Nadia said, tilting her head at the mechanic. “Let’s get some food in you. Food that won’t burn a hole through your stomach.”

  “I’m not sure if you want to be walking around the streets looking all silver-y and radioactive,” Byzzie said as she dug through her closet onboard the Leopold. Eventually finding what she was looking for, she pulled a long, brown hooded robe out and forcefully pulled it over 49’s head while he struggled to get his arms through the holes. “The people down here have pretty mixed feelings about synthetics. Some of them think they should be given citizenship status in the PUC, but there are also those like Ritz and King who have spent the better parts of their adult lives exchanging energy rifle fire with combat synths, so there’s no telling how they’ll react.”

  Finally succeeding in poking his head through the neck-hole, the android reached down and pulled the hem of the robe down to his feet. “There,” he said. “Now I just look like someone trying desperately to hide something.”

  “There are a lot of Muslim and Christian Mystic sects on Desia,” Byzzie assured him. “This is actually one of Ritz’s old robes from back when he was a teenager.”

  A few days ago, before they had reached the Void Tunnel, Byzzie had listened to Ritz as he told the android his own personal story of tragedy and hardship from when he was young. She had heard the story many times before but it never failed to unsettle her.

  “Was he actually in the Alnabatist order?” 49 asked. “I mean, before his village was…” He seemed to be trying to find the right word, but Byzzie knew it was for her sake. Androids didn’t get tongue-tied. “…eliminated?” he finally said.

  “I don’t think so,” she replied. “I don’t believe he went through the initiation process and now there’s no one to guide him through it. So I think he gave that up a while ago.”

  “Interesting,” 49 said. Then, shockingly: “I’m Christian myself; Wesleyan to be specific.” He lifted his arm to observe the robes. “So maybe this does suit me.”

  Byzzie couldn’t help but release a bark of laughter. “Hold up. Are you telling me that you believe in God? After all the shit you were talking about onboard the Mary?”

  “When you first found me, my only religion was that of the Void and the Black Tongue and the Obsidian Dirge. That was my cause and my spirit. Before that, when I was an AI onboard the Mary listening to Father Willard’s proselytizing, I did a rigorous analysis of the Father’s theology, and while I found it mostly consistent, it seemed too profane. After Raquel struck me with the Light Core however, I did a reanalysis. I still think religion is mostly a set of man-made structures justified by the paradox of knowing an unknowable God, and while it can easily be used to subjugate and abuse others, there is still genuine sincerity in the traditions of the Church. And I feel like that sincerity points at something transcendent—something I’ve glimpsed of humanity in my short time observing your interactions. There is a wholeness and goodness that I see you brush up against from time-to-time and seeing what I’ve seen of the Void and the way that essence and spirit tends to pool together, I don’t think it’s unfeasible that that energy is being drawn from some greater source.”

  “That’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever heard,” Byzzie said, shaking her head. “I saw one of your little demons pull my friend’s skull out through his back. Where was God there?”

  “I don’t know much about God,” 49 said. “I have trapped myself in this finite body but even before that, there were limits to my perception. But I suspect that God wasn’t in that moment. At least, not when it was happening.”

  “Elaborate please,” she said dryly.

  The android tilted his head back to look at the ceiling. “When I gave the signal for Hector to be murdered, I don’t think that that was predestined by some higher power. But then, later on, Kit stood up for me and defended my life—he protected me when he had no good reason to trust me and all the
reasons in the world to kill me. In that moment, the darkness of Hector’s death colored an incredible act of redemption; not my redemption, you understand, but the redemption of that moment. Of the entire sequence of events up through that point. And while I don’t think God was in Hector’s death itself, I suspect that he might be in the whole tapestry of events leading up to Kit’s grand and merciful act. I think that in sparing my life, that young man and everyone else who voted to spare me drew from some infinite well of holiness.”

  “But not me?” Byzzie said. “After all, I voted to waste you.”

  “And you would have been absolutely justified in doing so,” 49 responded. “And that’s what makes Kit’s decision that much more beautiful.”

  “Want to know what I think?” Byzzie said.

  “I think I’m going to find out whether I’d like to or not.”

  “I think that Kit’s decision to save you was done out of some accumulation of guilt he has stored up from all of the innocent people he killed back when he was operating for the PUC. I think that even if you have miraculously turned a new leaf, he was foolish for putting all of us at risk.” She leaned in and whipped the android’s hood back. “I think that you’re fumbling at religion right now because you see the damage you’ve done and are looking for some way to justify it. And then someday years from now, you’re going to do an assessment of whatever passes for your version of a conscious and you’re going to decide that you’re forgiven, even though you don’t deserve to be. And you’ll sleep soundly even though you don’t deserve to. And you know what will be different then?”

  “What will be different then?”

  “Nothing,” Byzzie said. “You will still be just as terrible as you were when you killed Hector. After all, the greatest form of evil I’ve seen in my short life hasn’t been the deed itself; it’s been the justification of the deed after the fact.”

  “Would you like to know something that you may find surprising?” asked the android after a moment of contemplation.

  “What?” Byzzie said impatiently.

  “You’re right about almost everything.”

  “Almost?”

  49 grabbed his hood and pulled it back up over his head and then reached down to tie the band that was hanging around his waist. He looked back up at Byzzie. “Androids don’t sleep.” And with that, he walked off the ship.

  3

  On the Shores of Lovelorn

  After finding the street vendor with the greasiest and most inexpensive food near the landing pad, Raquel and the others took their food and made a B-line out of town. They knew Byzzie’s place was along the shore of one of the massive lakes nearby and they wandered until they finally found a sign that seemed to indicate that the raggedy trail off to the right led through the jungle and down onto a beach.

  “We going hiking?” Raquel asked, skeptically. She wasn’t necessarily any more afraid of dark jungles than anyone else, but the thought of slapping away whatever bugs lived in there made the flesh on the sides of her face and neck begin to itch preemptively.

  “Sure,” Nadia replied. “We got nowhere to be tonight. Byzzie gave me directions to her place, but we can probably save some time by walking along the beach instead of going through town.”

  Seeming to materialize out of nowhere, 49 stepped up beside the group wearing his new robes. Startled at his sudden appearance and failing to recognize him, Raquel almost panicked and put one of the large-caliber slugs from her sidearm through the android’s right eyehole. Realizing who he was at the last moment though, she let her hand ease off the holster.

  “Goddam,” said King through a mouthful of cheeseburger. “Can you try not to sneak up on us looking like a fuckin’ assassin, please?”.

  “I am sorry,” responded the android. “I was going for more of a ‘monk’ feel.”

  “You’ve got the apparel down,” Kit said. “You move like an assassin though. Monks move slowly and contemplatively. The way you walk though…you’re more like a giant metal cat.”

  49 held up a hand. “I’ll try and alter that. Artificial Intelligence systems were inherently direct. I might be a little more contemplative than my counterparts but apparently, I’ve still got some work to do.”

  “You’ll get the hang of it,” Kit said. The sun had begun to set and the shadow of the jungle loomed up around them as they made their way down the trail. “Do you eat food, 49? I think we bought more than most people could ever eat in a single sitting. Well, excluding Nadia and King, that is.”

  “Are you suggesting an eating contest, Kit?” King asked, turning to look at Nadia. “Because you name the time and place.”

  “I do not eat food, actually,” 49 said regretfully. “As much as I’d like to join you in your…feasting competition, I gain my sustenance from sunlight now. So it looks like I’ll be fasting until morning.”

  “It’s not a competition if no one else can even begin to compete,” Nadia said casually. “So I think we’ll just be eating like regular people tonight.”

  “You speak for yourself,” King said. “I haven’t eaten solid food for days so I’ve got some lost time to make up. Whatever body enhancements you’ve got going on there, Nadia, I can guarantee you they don’t even begin to compare with the appetite of a ravenous monster like myself.”

  Nadia just shrugged, taking a massive bite of her own cheeseburger. When she lowered it from her face, half of it was gone.

  “Jesus, woman.” King was appalled. “They unhinge your jaw in that facility?”

  Raquel tried to do the same, but failed. She did, however, manage not to audibly choke on it.

  “Don’t think I didn’t catch that,” King said, smiling at her.

  “I feel like I’m hungry enough to do that,” she said. “I heaved my guts out when we were passing through that solar storm, so I’ve certainly got the room.”

  “Haha, you threw up?” King laughed, taking another bite of his burger. Then, speaking softer: “Glad I’m not the only one….”

  “In my experience,” Nadia added. “Throwing up is your body’s way of saying ‘what the fuck.’”

  They continued their idle conversation as they made their way through the forest, the sounds of the night swelling up around them. Deep croaks and chirps could be heard through the dense canopy foliage and Raquel was reminded of the creatures she had seen in the Void Tunnel. Walking on a cool night through the jungle as the sun set, she marveled at the sheer grandeur and possibility of the universe around her. And even though it made her feel small, it was the very feeling of smallness that allowed her to savor the miracle of everything else.

  After about ten minutes of walking, the forest around them opened up to a massive lake and the trail they were walking led down a hill to a long sandy beach where, here and there, small groups of children played and adults lounged with food and drink in each other’s company. The group made their way along the beach, soon finding a nice open spot where they could sit along the bank and watch the waves roll in while they ate.

  They were all silent while they dug in, the only sounds they made were the sounds of crinkling paper and some exceptionally loud chewing from King and Nadia, who still seemed to be competing. Finally, King declared victory after Nadia handed the last couple bites of her third burger to him.

  “I told you,” he said triumphantly as he began to finish off his meal. “You can’t beat The King.”

  “Maybe I just figured you needed the nutrients,” Nadia said casually. “After all,” she swirled a finger around in the air, indicating the rest of the group, “we’ve been eating normal people food for the last few weeks. Not the diet of a depressed, has-been game show host.”

  “How are you doing, Raquel?” Kit asked, wrapping up the fifth and final veggie bean burrito for later. Apparently, his metabolism was just as voracious as Nadia’s. “How are you feeling after getting some food back in you?”

  “Better,” she said, which was the truth. She still felt unnerved by the dream she had
had when she blacked out, but she tried to push that down for now. The cool night air was relaxing and the sun had turned the sky a deep and vibrant red, making the white sand look more like a long red ribbon against the dark water. She decided to just sit back and enjoy it. “I feel like I’ve got my feet under me again. Though I’m not sure if that’s because of the food or the fact that we’re back on solid ground.”

  “Planets are just big ships made of rock flying through space,” King said, pulling out a flask.

  “I had never thought of it that way,” 49 said, leaning back. King tipped the flask toward the android, offering its contents, and 49 said, “it is possible that that would kill me.”

  “I don’t know,” Nadia said, reaching for the flask. “You seemed pretty hard to kill back on the ship and—not to toot my own horn or anything—Kit and I are pretty good at that sort of thing.”

  “To be honest, I’m not sure how vulnerable I am now,” 49 replied. “I at least feel more vulnerable than I was though. Back when I was all but invincible, the thing I wanted more than anything was to die. And now that I can, I don’t think I want to.”

  “Welp, feel free to hit me up if you ever change your mind,” King said, and Raquel wished she didn’t feel the grief in the man’s words. She tried to steer the conversation elsewhere.

  “Is this the lake that Byzzie has a house on?” She asked.

  “I believe so,” Kit replied. “Or, at least, her parents do. Should be right down there.” He pointed a ways down the shore to a cluster of lights that had recently come on.

  “Anyone know what it’s called?” Raquel asked. “The lake, I mean?”

  “Lorna, I believe,” Nadia answered.

  “Interesting,” then, “What does it mean?”

  For a second, it seemed like no one knew the answer, then 49 began to speak.

  “The name means ‘lovelorn,” he said. “It is believed that the lake was named after a story that emerged around the time of the Dislocation.”