The Starfarer shook his head. “Yes,” it said.
“How long ago was that?”
“Many, many cycles. I do not remember.”
“Did every one of your kind do this?”
“Most of us, yes.” The hologram shimmered and became indistinct. “I am very tired. I must leave you now.”
“No, please!” Angie begged. “Stay a bit longer. Tell me more about yourself. If you are a ship, can we go back to… to my home world?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? How can you not know? You’re a starship!”
The hologram fuzzed out of existence. The robot rolled away and disappeared down its access tube, leaving Angie alone.
She felt too tired to cry. Everything she knew was gone. She was stuck inside this tiny white room with only an indifferent alien hologram for company.
She wondered if she wasn’t starting to go a bit crazy.
*****
Days passed before Lloyrnid visited her again. When the robot rolled into her room, she noticed that it had a number of dents and scratches on it that weren’t there before.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I am fine,” the hologram said. “We will continue our language lessons today.”
“Sounds good.”
Lloyrnid proceeded to instruct and drill her on vocabulary. She learned the words for all sorts of parts of the ship: the engines, maneuvering thrusters, and even the repair systems.
Angie didn’t mind the somewhat dry subject matter. She was just glad to have the company.
Sometimes Lloyrnid would stop in the middle of a sentence and stare off into the distance. Angie would look at him then, examining his squishy tentacle-like legs and his bulbous head. They said that eyes were the window into the soul, but she could find nothing behind his large grey orbs.
She would occasionally interrupt him to ask more personal questions.
“Do you remember your parents, Lloyrnid?”
The alien squid nodded. “I do not. It was a long time ago.”
“How about friends? Do you hang out with other Starfarers?”
“Space is very large. We do not often journey together.”
“Don’t you get lonely?”
Lloyrnid’s eyes blinked. “Yes,” it said.
“I’m feeling very lonely these days,” Angie admitted.
“It was very… it was unfortunate, what happened to your ship.”
“You could say that.”
“I am… I am sad about it.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
Angie still didn’t know all of the alien’s facial expressions, but she sensed somehow that it was being genuine. Lloyrnid looked sad. There was another emotion in there as well, but she couldn’t figure out what it was.
“We will continue with the lesson,” the squid said.
“Okay.”
Angie settled back and tried to concentrate on the tutorial. She felt sorry for Lloyrnid. She imagined what it would be like, stranded alone in space for uncounted centuries with nobody to talk to.
“Are you listening, Angie?” the hologram asked.
“Sorry. My mind wandered for a moment. I am listening.”
“Good. This is important.”
Llyornid continued on with his endless list of new vocabulary words, insisting that Angie repeat each one and quizzing her after every twelve words. After many hours she found herself getting tired. She tried valiantly to keep her eyes open, but it became a losing battle. She drifted off into a deep sleep.
*****
Angie woke up from a bad dream. It was dark. In the months she had been confined to this room, the lights had never been off before.
She floated out of her coffin and looked around. Dim lights were flickering in the darkness, casting sharp shadows on the walls. In the distance, she heard a low thumping sound.
Smoke started to fill the room. Angie coughed and wiped her eyes. Another light flashed. In the afterimage, she thought she saw her old oxygen mask on the wall.
She drifted over and discovered it was indeed hanging there. Out of instinct she grabbed it and put it on. Cool, refreshing air flowed into her lungs and she breathed deeply. The smoke was getting thick.
A circular aperture had appeared in the floor, the same one she had explored weeks ago. She climbed through it and escaped down the access tube. Behind her, the door closed again.
Her heart was pounding. “Lloyrnid!” she called out. There was no response.
The door wouldn’t budge, so she continued through the tube until she had reached the smaller room with the windows. At least there was no black smoke in this room. She peered outside and saw hordes of the small robots in the distance. They appeared to be fighting each other.
A loud clang came from the far wall and Angie flinched. She looked around for an exit.
It was the same robot she had seen before, pounding on the wall trying to get in. This time the door gave way with a creak and the robot started crawling through, poking its large metal club through the gap menacingly.
She wrestled the club from the robot’s claws and bashed it on its arm. It screamed. The action caused her whole body to recoil and she bounced off the far wall of the small room.
A third door suddenly opened up on the floor. Angie stared at it, not certain what to do. Then a series of lights shaped like a red arrow flashed on the floor, pointing to the hole. The arrow was the same tentacle-like symbol that Lloyrnid had used in their first communication.
She followed it and disappeared down the hole. The robot, recovering from her assault, chased after her.
Angie crawled through the glass tube like a tiny fish swimming through a water pipe. Red arrows continued to flash in front of her, guiding her left or right each time the tube branched off. She held the club tightly in her hand as she propelled herself forward with her legs. The robot sailed towards her, accelerating with bursts of compressed air. It gained ground on her each time they went through a long section of tube, but she was faster scrambling through the intersections. Occasionally she would feel the robot behind her, growling in a language she did not understand, the air from its maneuvering jets tickling at her feet. She screamed, but kept moving.
She emerged into a large white room, devoid of windows or ornamentation. The robot flew in behind her. Angie turned around and faced her assailant, brandishing her club.
The robot charged her. She swung the club and missed. The robot grabbed her arms and legs with its metal claws. A small hatch opened in the robot’s chest and a drill extended out, aiming directly at her heart.
She screamed.
There was a loud crash and the robot’s claws loosened their grip. She went spinning off into the corner of the room.
A second robot had entered the room and was grappling with the first. “Help,” a faint voice came from her metal savior. Sparks shot out as the drill hit metal.
Angie found the club floating nearby and picked it up. Cautiously, she moved towards the two robots. She braced herself by grabbing a bumpy section of the floor with her free hand, and swung the club hard towards her foe.
It connected.
The robot’s small head caved in. The drill stopped and the robot sailed harmlessly across the room and bounced off the wall.
“Hurry,” the voice said. It sounded like Lloyrnid, but it was scratchy and faint. “There are more coming.”
“What do I do? Where do I go?”
“There is only one safe place. There is a small chamber in one of the walls.” The robot tilted its head to indicate where it was. “Go inside, and press the yellow and green buttons simultaneously. Then flip the white switch.”
“What does that do?”
“The only thing that can save both of us,” Lloyrnid said.
Angie looked at the robot. “Okay,” she said. She turned away.
“Angie,” Lloy
rnid called out.
She looked back. “Yes?”
“I have very much enjoyed meeting you.”
She nodded.
Angie turned away again for the last time. On the wall red arrows indicated the entrance to the chamber. She pressed a button and the door opened. The buttons inside operated exactly the way Lloyrnid had described them. The door closed, sealing her inside.
Metallic tendrils surrounded her, probing every inch of her body. Angie cried out as sharp needles penetrated her head and her heart.
*****
Angie woke up and wasn’t sure if she was still alive.
She dimly remembered a terrible nightmare, her ship exploding, her husband drifting off into the infinities of space.
She thought she remembered a green squid, and shook her head.
She didn’t have a head.
Her body felt vast, like she was a blue whale swimming through an endless ocean. She felt the currents brushing past her, faint wisps of hydrogen gas, on the order of one atom per cubic centimeter. Her legs were made out of steel.
She saw, but not the way she was used to seeing. Now she could see in both visible light and radio waves. The sky was ablaze with stars.
She heard a click in her head.
It was Lloyrnid.
“If you are hearing this, Angie, then I am dead,” the familiar voice said. “This is a recording. Please listen carefully.
“I have not been myself for many centuries. Starfarers are not immortal, much as we would like to be. Over time, entropy always wins. My mind was wrecked with irreversible decay, something that many of us eventually suffer from but few wish to discuss. I was having trouble even maintaining my basic functions. This is why I was stranded between the stars, unable to jump into hyperspace, unable even to move out of the way of your ship in time to avoid the collision. I am so, so sorry.
“After rescuing you, I felt I was getting better. I really thought I could beat this, but eventually it became too much. The robots that attacked you were controlled by the part of my mind that was losing control. I tried to keep you safe, but I couldn’t. There was only one thing I could think of to save you. If you are hearing this now, then it worked.
“Angie, you are now a Starfarer. You entered the same chamber that I did, so many millions of years ago, when I uploaded my mind into the mainframes that operate this ship.
“Your mind is young and fresh, and should have no problem adapting to its new container. You may go wherever you wish. It is a large galaxy. I wish you the best of luck.”
Angie’s mind reeled. She tried to move her limbs and in response, she felt her mighty engines lighting up the cosmos with a brilliant flame. She was free.
She thought about Lloyrnid. What were the odds that the alien would have collided with her ship, given the immense vastness of space? It defied the imagination.
She stared at the stars and realized that her eyes were telescopes. She could imagine her squid-like friend scanning the skies and seeing the tiny dot of light that was her ship. Like a drowning man swimming towards a raft, Lloyrnid had reached across the stars to find her.
“I’ll miss you,” she said quietly to herself.
END
Thank you for taking the time to read my story. To find other works I’ve written, or to drop me a line, please visit https://jeremyreimer.com
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