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 reassure 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.