Experiencing a series of blackouts as he wandered out of the airlock, he kept losing short stretches of time. He meandered amidst the broken and the crawling. He watched bodies laying slack against the walls. The moaning of the broken left little to the imagination, most of them proclaiming the nature of their injury in delirium.
The thick hull had taken on the brunt of the fall, but the reverberations, the shakings and turmoil inside the material, it spread through the ship like an earthquake. Many found themselves with broken limbs or had awoken to find blood filling their mouths. Many hand’t waken up at all.
The back of his mind seemed to hurt as though something had taken a bite out of it. As Bolt trawled the ship, mindlessly and lost, he began to notice a strange ichor oozing out of the walls. In some places it had already begun to harden into thick stalactites. He feared to even touch it. The sounds the slime made beneath his feet were thick, like stepping on honey. It smelled of burned plastic – a smell now familiar and unwelcome.
A deep voice shook his senses from behind. “Bolt!” It was Marius, his form draped in thick layers of protective fibers encasing him in cosmonautic armor. “We have to get back to the bridge, assess the damage, casualties, this should never have happened!” Marius hissed, his voice muffled behind the visor.
“What happened? Why didn’t the ship compensate for the fall? Why didn’t it do anything?” Bolt asked.
“I’ve no clue,” Marius admitted. “Now come, walk, let’s go.”
“Where’s Dyekart?” Bolt asked.
“I can’t find him anywhere,” Marius answered.
“It wasn’t just me, was it?” Bolt said while they struggled through the hallways, most of which were devoid of suffering crew, but still others full of them. “You saw it too, didn’t you? The death of this world.”
“I wish…” Marius sighed. “I wish I hadn’t. I wouldn’t call it seeing either, I was there. Physically there. And as far as I know, so was everyone else on board the ship. What do you suppose it means?”
“A warning,” Bolt said bluntly.
“A warning? Against?”
“For us not to come near this planet,” Bolt sighed. “This didn’t turn out the way I imagined it. Will this ship even drift again?”
“I doubt it,” Marius said.
***
Dyekart had taken the winding path down to the Essentium. Every step he took made his heart race and his mind bleed out more and yet more scenarios, situations where he would find Sol trapped inside some personal mind–hell or lying on the floor, forcefully disconnected from the ship. How else could he explain her total absence? Her apparent escape from the confines of the ship? Or, what seemed more precise, its escape from the confines of her mind. What he hadn’t expected to find upon reaching the dreaded gate of the chamber, however, was Ia, standing in front of it, waiting for him, draped in protective layers of nano–fibering.
“I knew you’d come,” she said. “We need to get to the bottom of this.”
“Ia–“
“Don’t you dare send me away, Dye, not this time,” she snapped.
“I wasn’t going to,” he said, “I want you here with me, I need someone to ground me, keep me centered, I’m afraid of what I’ll find in there.”
“So am I,” she nodded. “But that’s just how it is, isn’t it? I remember you telling me to steel myself whenever we came to a new planet. This is no different, we have to go look, there’s nothing else as important right now.”
Dyekart stretched his hand and waved it over the green panel beside the door, “I agree,” he added. Ia grasped his wrist.
“What did you do?” she asked him. “Your cranium is shattered, you’re bleeding. Why didn’t you go into a safe–chamber?”
“I needed to go see her,” he said.
“You idiot!” she spat, “We need to get you to a medical bay.”
“I’ll be fine,” he claimed.
“No you won’t be! You need–“
“Let’s deal with this first, alright?” he said and walked into the chamber. Challenge
The first thing that hit them was the smell. A multitude of the connections providing nourishment, along with the main valve for excrement channeling were disconnected. On the floor, bent in front of the throne where she had sat, Sol lay motionless within her own feces. Unable to control her bodily functions regulated for her all these years, she couldn’t even prop herself up. Her garbs were soaked, revealing her pale skin. The nourishment pump continued its secretions of clear liquid and the non–pleasant smelling concoction dripped endlessly from the disconnected tube beside her. Ia adjusted a wall–cogitator knob on the right side of the dome–room and stopped it. She couldn’t do anything about the smell, however. Sol laid face down, her mouth frothing as Dyekart sat down beside her and rolled her over into his arms. The cabling still attached to her made the task somewhat difficult.
“Sol…” he whined.
Her eyes were milky, un–seeing, Dyekart wondered if she could even hear him.
“We need to get her to the medical deck,” Ia said. “The both of you.”
“Sol… I’m sorry, I couldn’t control the dreams anymore,” Dyekart said. “I tried to, but they escaped me.”
“What are you saying? I don’t think she can even hear you.”
A trembling, ghostly–pale hand reached up, skeletally thin and frail, its fingers groping the air in an attempt to find Dyekart’s face. Sol tried to mumble something, but all that came out was a dry cough. At length, she managed to touch his un–face. She showed no indication of noticing it was cold and made of metal alloys. His blood seeped down from the back of his shattered cranial plate and down Sol’s hand, contrasting the whiteness of it, making it look even paler.
“Dyekart,” Ia urged him, “get up, carry her! There’s still time!”
“There was never any time,” he said. “Not for us. Not for the two of us.”
“Stop with this! There’s always more time,” she said and kneeled beside him, shaking his shoulder gently to try and focus his senses on her. It didn’t help, all Dyekart’s myriad eyes saw were Sol.
“The ship killed her,” he said. “We were never meant to be so intertwined with machines,” Dyekart proclaimed, “we already have the perfect machine, the universal consciousness, yet in out blindness, we search for more.”
“Don’t–“
“Always externally, never internally. It took me this long to realize it, Ia, what do you suppose it means for the rest of humanity?”
“Realize what? For once talk like a normal person, please,” Ia said, trying to stop him, yet at the same time keep his ramblings going so he would perhaps snap out of it. But she didn’t realize, what she couldn’t, was that he had finally realized the truth.
“I have ruined myself,” he said. “I’ve ruined her. I know now. Everything we want to be or want to possess, we already have and are. I already had her, she was my wife, on Earth, we were happy.”
“That’s why you need to get up, to save her. Get up!” she said, grabbing him below the armpit, trying to lift him, get him to walk. There was no point, Dyekart was simply too heavy, his augmentics alone weighting more than she could hope to lift.
“She needed to meld with the ship, Dy,” Ia said. “Otherwise we could never had gotten so far across the galaxy. We needed her.”
“You’re wrong,” he said, “I needed her, she was all I ever needed, but instead I searched outward, through the expanses of matter, failing to look within me, I failed to recognize my desires.”
“Dy,” Sol slobbered, looking yet not looking, “don’t…fret…for I am…free.” Her hands went slack, her eyelids half–closed, she stopped breathing.
“No, no, no,” he cried and squeezed her to his chest. “I can remake you! I will–“
“Dy, we’ve never made a clone of her, you know this, we always assumed–“
“Shut up! Help me get her out of here.”
***
Sh
e did as he asked and helped him to his feet. Sol’s head rolled backwards in his grip, her one hand hung, the other resting on her belly. Ia disconnected the last of Sol’s cranial tubes, each still relaying electric data, fizzling like angry serpents as she threw them on the paste–slick floor.
They ascended the spiraling steps, up through the empty hallways, into the main decks. The translocation walls didn’t work, so they had to take the long way.
Leaving behind a trail of blood, Dyekart struggled with Sol in his hands while Ia helped him stay upright as much as she could.
She heard him whispering, “I will remake you,” as if it were some kind of mantra, as though saying it over and over would reshape reality and he would be able to actually do it. For Dyekart’s sake, Ia hoped it would happen. No one had come to help them carry the heart of the ship through the strange ooze–slick tunnels. They were all too busy saving themselves. With panels loosened in the crash, their edges bloody in places, there could be no doubt some of the people had gotten badly injured by the exposed plates. They pasted a few of them nearest the infirmary. Most lay unconscious or in no state to help even themselves.
The two of them managed to make a few more steps before Dyekart collapsed. His weight took Ia down with him. “Get up, leave her, you don’t need to die here,” she said and put a hand on the back of his head, trying to halt the blood pooling under him. The inner light of the ship’s walls had faded. Reduced to a dull red, the glow only partially illuminated the hallways.
“Leave her!” Ia repeated.
“No,” he slurred, blood drooling out of his mouth–grille, “I left her before, I let her to rot in her chair. I can’t leave her now.”
“She’s already gone,” Ia argued.
“I’m at fault,” Dyekart said. “All of this, I needed to know, I needed to find out.”
“Find out what?” she asked. “How could you be blamed for this?”
“I wanted to know them,” Dyekart coughed, “I wished to see how they think, and she wanted to see what I dream.”
“You’re not making much sense here,” Ia said.
“The dream you saw, the destruction,” he said, “it was the only dream I dreamt. And each time I had found more, another morsel of how the destroyers operate. And when she saw them, when she found them orbiting a black hole, she wanted to know too.”
“Why?”
“To dream,” Dyekart coughed. “She must have thought I chose to dream a pleasant dream. And when she dreamt for the first time, her consciousness, her dream spread into all of you. If only I hadn’t been so damn insistent. If only–“
“Stop it and get up!” Ia shook him. “This isn’t the time for this, Dy. You have to get up.”
“Promise me something, Ia,” Dyekart whispered.
“Don’t,” she said, “shut up and walk! Do it!”
“Promise me you’ll–“ he didn’t finish. Instead he threw out a blood–filled cough. His head–wound stopped bleeding and he rolled over to his side, his strength–less neck lolling his head. His hands never let go of Sol.
***
“The hell’s happening to this place?” Bolt asked.
Marius gazed around as though in need of another look to make up his mind and reach a satisfying answer. He found none to his liking. “There must’ve been a rapture in the crash,” he said. “Like a crack or something, maybe even a tearing in the material through which some kind of contaminant of this world could seep in. I don’t think we’re safe in here, at least not for long.”
As they ran, struggling to try and ignore the pleas of others as they begged them to try and help them to stand up, the two more often than not realized that they couldn’t. There were simply too many of them, too many with broken craniums, too many with shattered pelvises or broken limbs crackling as they tried to move. They couldn’t possibly help them all. Not alone in their attempts to aid, the two of them could see people who had managed to clothe themselves in proper protection or made it to crash–chambers helping those they could. But there were still too few. They needed to find out how they could go about helping. They needed to get to the bridge.
There were but a few of those fortunate enough to be able to get to the Armory and equip themselves with a protective layer of nanotubing, most didn’t get the chance. The dream had kicked in before they could even get to a safer deck. There were more than few with broken necks. The pain of them surrounded Bolt as though it were permeating from their bodies. He had to stop himself from kneeling down to try and help the departing. The ship was falling apart around them and a distinct sense of urgency propelled the two men towards the bridge.
“What about the cloning chamber?” Bolt asked. “The clones are pretty safe in their compartments, aren’t they? The amniotic fluid? What if we simply wake them and imprint each with memories?”
“We can’t,” Merius explained. “Not until we find out what we can and what we can’t do around here.”
The halls were dim, but this did not vex their minds, despite the fact that they knew it should, if anything, the red helped to obscure and hide the blood. They neared the main strategic deck, the hall leading to it growing wider and taller. A chill most foul began to blow through them. Bolt could sense it even through his fiber–covered body, through even the mouth–grille and its filters. He felt the struggle of it to decay his skin and stop him dead in his tracks. A sensation of goosebumps and limbs falling asleep rolled past him. Bolt knew whatever had seeped in through the cracks of the ship, it wasn’t natural, nothing could do this and do it with such haste.
“Must be a viral organism left behind to ensure nothing would ever rise again on the planet,” Marius suggested, trying to avoid the slime dripping from the walls. Bolt could only hope the suits would protect them against it. The thought of his wife kept him moving.
They came to a halt before the massive blast door.
“Something must’ve happened inside,” Marius said. “Otherwise these things wouldn’t have closed.”
“Or someone had closed them on purpose,” Bolt added.
“Indeed.”
The photonic panel upon it operated on reserve power, dim and two–dimensional, on first glance inactive. Mind–linking to the grid, processing commands and replacing them with his own, Marius easily hacked the console. Knowing exactly what to do, he began to make quick work of overriding the lockdown.
Bolt stood beside Marius as the man worked, his mind spinning in anticipation, his body excreting sweat within the suit. The door groaned like some ancient, rusted gate found in the deep ocean – a hidden passage opened for the first time after centuries of slumber. The gate locked within the walls with a heavy thud, and revealed an abundance of movement within the bridge. The two men took careful steps inside, their feet munching below them. Everything bubbled or pulsed, grew or decayed, even the walls upon which all the growth festered appeared to bend or peel off in layers. The main deck had become a festering hall of disease, rot, and decay, a vomitorium. Dripping and hardening before their eyes were stalactites of filth, each hanging from the edges of the many levels and platforms that composed the upper layers. Fungus grew in hairy lumps, feeding upon the walls and floors. Flies, or what sounded like buzzing insects hugged the filth, while slugs and what appeared to be limbless salamanders squirmed everywhere, blindly looking and touching everything they came across. Unsavory smells reached the two men, even through the mouth–filters in their helmets. They halted for a moment, totally lost as how to handle such insipid and absolute infestation, unsure of even how it could happen so fast.
In the middle of the deck stood a horrendous mound of hardened puss, its shape molded into a headless mushroom–like protrusion. It gave of a bizarre, white–blue photoluminescence, engulfing the deck with its radiance. Standing around it were ten disfigured, humanoid creatures, each with large, half–exploded and bulging eyes that never blinked, they couldn’t. Most of them were missing their lower jaws, or had them hang loosely off their c
hinbone. Their overgrown, bloated tongues hung limp from their mouths – a breeding ground for the insipid flies that flew around them like a cloak of plague. None of the creatures moved. They seemed to be frozen, brittle, their lanky limbs and sickly green skin overgrown with tumors and scar tissue, most only half–healed or in the process of bursting. A sound emanated from their mouths, a chant that came off more as a presence than a vibration in the air. Both of the men felt their legs wobble at the low pitch the figures held.
“What the f…” Marius breathed, unable to finish his own words.
“Get out,” Bolt said, “close the doorway!”
They turned and hastily exited the chamber. Marius attempted to close the massive doors. He struggled at the panel for a while, until the gates finally began to obey. But shut they would not. The slime had already seeped into the openings upon which the gates slid, halting them midway as slugs fell into the opening in their mindless crawling. The two didn’t wait to see if the gate would manage to close, they simply turned and ran.
***
Ia needed to get Dyekart back. The thought prevailed even through the sorrow. She still had hope, she still had the cloning chamber, and with it, she could, in her mind, still see him walk again. No matter what happens, she needed to get him back.
She climbed into a narrow access tube leading to the cloning chamber, and descended down the laddering to try and awaken the clones of the dead and imprint them with memories manually. What she didn’t know, however, was just how monumental a task this would be, and that only Sol had the intellect required to operate the quantum computer and flood it with commands necessary for its operation. Ia would try, however, as most beings in desperation do. But as she climbed down and entered the chamber, gazing down at the spiraling sections of it, she found, instead of undisturbed pods, a shock–theater which almost made her let go of the laddering. All of the clones, to the last, had climbed out of their cells and were now wandering about. Stumbling in the half–darkness, they kept falling of the platforms, bumping into each other, or kept walking into walls as thought they couldn’t make sense of the solidity of matter. The dim lighting obscured much of their reality, and all Ia could truly see were mindless meat–things, their slow movements and the shadows they drew the only indication of their infant–like, non–existent thoughts. The only possible explanation she could come up with was that the protocols which kept the clones sealed in stasis had somehow shattered in the crash. This made no sense to her, but as she hung from the rail, thinking and examining the ramification of this, with one hand grasping the iron, she couldn’t bring herself to climb back up just yet. After a while, she began to try and find a reason to even go back up. But all she found in her thoughts were dead bodies, the dying, the mystery and the pain. Her home, the place she was born in, all of her reality was crumbling, caving in around her, decaying. She began to hear something above her, she didn’t even look up. He’s gone. The thought sucked the breath out of her. Truly he was gone now, the only friend she would die for, even thought she had never shown or told him this.