alone."
Brahma said, "It's not your fault. And you're not alone."
The boy watched Brahma for a moment. He looked over his simulated human form and he stared with crackling electric eyes at Brahma's electro quantum structure.
"What are we?" he said.
"Gods, I think." Brahma said. "I was found in a Hindu Temple on Earth-978. That's why I picked up this form."
"Earth-978?"
"Oh right," Brahma said, "You wouldn't know about them. Okay. You know there's other planets in outer space right?"
"Yeah, but only like the idea of them. My world's gone as far as the moon—"
Brahma said, "Well, it turns out most alien planets are duplicates of Earth. I'm not really sure why. Anyway, I'm working for an organization from the first Earth around here to develop space travel. They call themselves the Galactic Union. We explore the galaxy and do what we can to make sure other Earths grow civilized enough to join us. You're not alone."
"I saw a regular person down on the planet, and a robot guy. They with you?"
"That would be Lieutenant Colonel Elorg and Chief Kylie Hayes," Brahma said, "The girl was indeed human. Elorg is from another civilization we befriended, the Symphony of Life. They're cyborgs."
The boy said, "And are there more like us?"
"There used to be," Brahma said. "Before I was born there was some kind of a war. I bet some of us are in hiding."
"So we're alone?" the boy said.
They hung in space. What little hope the boy had built up during their conversation crashed on the scorched, black rocks of his soul.
The boy said, "Just because there's billions and billions more that doesn't mean it was okay for me to kill a few billion people."
"I've got an idea," Brahma said. "I've only ever heard about it in books, but I think it might help you. Might be dangerous, though."
. . .
It took a few minutes for Elorg to repair the damage he'd done to the geometrics probe by jumping over it. He'd stomped on a couple delicate circuits that he replaced out of his own cybernetics.
He activated an energy beacon. Back on the ship a control in the bottom corner of Golem's tablet flashed on. The robot pressed the image down and that activated the energy beam.
The beam cut through the atmosphere, losing a small percentage of itself into the dense clouds surrounding the Earth. Still, there was plenty of beam to go around. It sluiced perfectly into the probe's energy siphon.
The geometrics probe kicked to life. It fired high powered electrical beams in all directions down and built up a map of the interior of the planet.
The news didn't come as much of a surprise to Elorg.
"Boiling lava all the way down," he said.
Chief Hayes said, "Great. Can you get this teleport module working finally?"
. . .
"Sir, we're getting some strange readings from outside the ship," the ensign at the scanner station said.
The colonel said, "Send them to my tablet."
He looked at the figures and saw something he never expected. The two energy signatures were close at hand, blasting out energy tendrils.
Merging.
"Uh," the Colonel said, "Raise the shields."
. . .
Sharp knives twinkling under campfire light. Blood. Cow's blood, draining from an enraged, but bound, bull. Sacrifices on an ancient Earth. Hands in prayer. Worshippers. Images flashed in Brahma's mind.
Were these memories his own...? Or was he remembering things from the last boy on Earth's past? Perhaps when he was found he wasn't an egg but a chrysalis, ready to transform him into a new and exciting form.
But gradually he realized that these images came from the mind of The Boy.
There were other gods. They wanted to leave this Earth. And then there was a battle between good and evil. A war in outer space.
The memories became clear after a comet fell down on an Earth. There was a sick baby, but the force, weakened by the cosmic Ragnarok gave the last of it's strength to regenerate him. After that came the memories of a brief life. Strange abilities, things levitate or appear from thin air. His parents are terrified that their child in the harbinger of some strange new evolution. They hand him over to the scientists without a fight.
And then Brahma saw fire. Then loneliness.
The two god-like energy-beings hung in space in front of the Starship Victory.
"I think I know what happened," Brahma said. "Follow me."
He vanished in a swirl of light.
. . .
"Reroute power to the scanning array, Golem. Reroute power to the shields, Golem," the engineering chief muttered to himself. "Reroute yourself. Pick a thing and do it."
Two swirls of light exploded onto the engineering deck. Golem dove behind a nearby workbench, while Ensign Burroughs watched in slight amusement.
Ensign Burroughs waved and said, "Hey, Brahma."
Brahma and Tom emerged from the light and gently landed on the floor of the engineering deck.
"Looking good," Brahma said, nodding at Ensign Burroughs. "Can you reconfigure the scanners to search for hyperspace disturbances?"
"Reroute power to the hyperdrive—" Golem muttered.
"No problem," said Ensign Burroughs. He slid his hands over the workbench and opened up a window. He dragged a couple icons onto the readout for the scanner array.
Immediately the workbench kicked the holographic generators online and a pockmarked brown sphere appeared. A lattice of arrows appeared over the map of the planet.
"Hyperspace nodes," Brahma said.
"What?" Tom said.
"You know how there's three spacial dimensions, height, width, and depth?" Brahma waved his hand in an upward, then side to side direction to explain.
The boy nodded.
"There's more than that, the rest of them are just really tiny and you can't generally use them," Brahma said. "The hyperspace nodes are places where these spacial dimensions are stretched out. Usable."
The boy said, "And that means?"
"There's a chance that you didn't kill everybody. They just got shunted into hyperspace," Brahma said.
"Does that mean that Mr. Golem can reroute the engines through the primary thrusters then bounce a graviton particle beam off the deflector array and let everybody out?"
Golem groaned weakly.
"No," Brahma said. "But there's hope you can figure out how to undo what happened and save your world."
Golem said, "Wait, how does he know my name?"
"We merged brains. Long story," Brahma said.
Colonel Dart's voice came over the voice system, "Golem, can you reroute power to the teleports?"
For the last hour or so Golem had been rerouting power from one sub-system to the next and then two more after that. This was inevitable after pouring so much of the ship's power into the shield production.
Golem collapsed on the floor, shivering.
"Bust me down for scrap now," he muttered.
Ensign Burroughs tapped his communicator and said, "On it,"
. . .
After the ordeal with the planet and the little kid, Elorg needed a stiff drink and Chief Hayes needed a grapefruit juice. Once the teleport in the probe brought them far enough into the atmosphere for the ship's teleport to take them home they continued immediately to The Pub.
The Pub was probably the second most popular recreation area, after the Imaginarium. Elorg and Kylie walked through the front door. It was three hours into first shift—but even at that time it was halfway filled with people, sucking down beers and elaborate fruity drinks.
They walked up to a drink dispenser and ordered theirs. As the ship reconfigured matter in their glasses into a double-syrup margarita with a sugar rim and a straight up grapefruit juice Chief Hayes noticed a swarm of people in the middle of the room.
Usually this time of day there'd be a few people in the middle, but most everybody else would be by the front window looking out into space. Chief
Hayes tapped Elorg on the shoulder and motioned toward the group.
Elorg swapped spectrum types on his cybernetic eye until he could see reasonably well through the crowd. He reeled.
"It's Brahma—"
Chief Hayes said, "He doesn't usually draw this much of a crowd."
"He's got that kid with him."
Elorg sucked down his margarita in a single long gulp and ordered another one. Chief Hayes shrugged. She stepped down to get a closer look at the kid.
The communicator on Elorg's hip shook and beeped. He picked it up.
"Yo," he said.
The Colonel was calling on a private channel. "Now that you're back on the ship could you come up to cover the bridge. I want to have a chat with our new guest. Can you cover the bridge?"
Elorg said, "I'm on my way, sir."
Kylie pushed through the crowd. As soon as she was a couple people back from him, the boy shot her a look. He jumped into the air and floated out above her.
"Hey lady," the kid said, "You've got balls of steel! Hey, everybody, she stood up and didn't take any crap from me when I turned into this..."
The lava demon replaced the little boy in a swirl of light. He was still levitating. It had the effect of a Imaginarium game saved during a particularly exciting moment.
"Yeah," one of the ensigns said, "that sounds like Chief Badass."
Chief Hayes grimaced. Space demons, chaos viruses, armies of evil? No problem. A theoretically complimentary nickname? Terrifying.
She said, "So it turns out he's not dangerous?"
The demon shifted back into Tom form.
"No!" he said, "Promise." The boy held his hand out in a pinky-swear configuration.
Chief Hayes said, "What are you going to do now?"
"I'm gonna go explore that planet where you guys found my buddy Brahma. I've gotta find out about my past and stuff."
Chief Hayes nodded. She said, "Good luck, kid."
The door at the front of The Pub slid open. Colonel Dart stared in from the doorway, a snarl that must have been an attempt at a smile stretched across his face. Everybody except for Chief Hayes tried to hide their drinks quickly and invisibly behind their back, but luckily for them Colonel Dart had no idea who was supposed to be on duty, and besides, he was staring at the boy levitating in the air.
He took a step inside.
"Kid," he said, "I run this boat. My name's Eric."
The crowd murmured at the mention of the Colonel's first name. It was almost as if he was human after all.
"I'm Tom," the boy said. He levitated down next to the Colonel and held out his hand. The Colonel shook it.
"Mr. Brahma tells me that there might be a way to save your world," the Colonel said.
"He says it's a long shot, but if I'm really a god-like energy-being then I guess I'll have enough time to figure out how."
"Good attitude. If you ever figure it out don't hesitate to tell me. I might be able to use help with a similar problem."
The boy nodded, but didn't know exactly why.
At this moment the door opened again and Golem walked in, without even looking. He crashed into Colonel Dart. Golem tried to help the Colonel to his feet but he was already livid.
"You've scuffed my uniform—"
"Sorry sir. I'm kinda preoccupied."
"And where's your skin?"
"Forgot it this morning sir," Golem said, "Wait, no. Pretend I said it's a political statement."
"And aren't you on duty?"
"Uhh," Golem grunted. He thought for a moment, "I'm a robot. It's not like I'm coming here to get drunk."
"Then what are you here for?"
Golem said, "Uh, to repair the—I wanted to see that kid! I wanted to see that kid."
"Hi," the kid said.
"Great," Golem said. He continued on to the drink dispensers.
Brahma teleported in next to the kid.
"Tom, there's one thing I'd like to thank you for," he said.
The boy said, "I'm the one who should be thanking you. You've opened up a whole galaxy of possibilities where the only one I had before was sitting on my charcoal earth."
"Well, I had a lesser problem, I'll give you that. I was just lonely. It's been decades since the Galactic Union has found evidence of any other post-corporeal beings so I've spent my entire life at least somewhat lonely. I've tried to fill the time with girls and imaginarium games, but it's always basically come