“I don’t know.”
The Meeker’s third stomach shifted uncomfortably. There had never been a fact the Eye did not know, a puzzle she could not quickly solve.
The Eye morphed into a dodecahedron. “Finally! My Corpus has just decoded a fragment of the message.”
“What does it say?”
“The message encodes a lifeform, which I will now attempt to recreate.”
His outer sheath grew slimy with anticipation. He was going to see a creature from the Long Gone!
A second tube materialized beside the first. A grotesque lump of quivering flesh formed inside it before collapsing into a pile of red ichor.
“How lovely!” he said.
The Eye expanded into a mist. “That’s not the creature. I’ve used the wrong chirality for the nucleic acids. I will try again.”
Did the Great All-Seeing Eye just err? he thought. How is this possible?
The lump vaporized and vanished, and a new shape formed. First came a crude framework of hard white mineral, then a flood of viscous fluids, soft organs and wet tissues, all wrapped under a covering of beige skin.
“Close your outer sheath,” the Eye said. “I’m changing the atmosphere and temperature to match the creature’s tolerances.”
The Eye didn’t pause, and if the Meeker hadn’t acted instantly, he would’ve died in the searing heat and pressure. The air was now so dense that he could feel his nine limbs press against it as they fluttered about.
The cylinder door swung open and out poured a sour-smelling mist. Thinking this was a greeting, the Meeker flatulated a sweet-smelling response.
Four limbs spoked out from the creature’s rectangular torso. A bulbous lump rose from the top. It had two deep-set orbs, a hooked flange of skin over two small openings, and a pink-lipped orifice covering rows of white mineral. Crimson fibers, the same smoldering shade as the ancient stars, draped from its peak. The Meeker had never seen anything more disgusting.
“What the… ?” the creature said, its voice low-pitched in the dense air. “Where am I?”
The Meeker gasped. “It speaks from its anus?”
“That’s its mouth,” said the Eye.
This foul creature was far different from the glorious ancients he had imagined, and he felt a little disappointed.
“Welcome to Bulb 64545,” said the Eye. “I am the All-Seeing Eye, and this is Meeker 6655321. I have adjusted your body so you can understand and speak Verbal Sub-Four, our common tongue. Who are you?”
“I… I’m Beth,” the creature said. “Where am I?”
The Eye told the Beth how she had been constructed from an encoded message. “It’s been millennia since I last discovered something new in the galaxy. Your presence astonishes me.”
“Yeah,” the Beth said, “it astonishes me too.”
“And me!” added the Meeker.
“Millennia?” the Beth said. Pink membranes flashed before her white and green orbs. Were these crude things her eyes?
“What species are you?” said the Eye.
The Beth grasped her shoulders as if to squeeze herself. “I’m human.”
“Curious. I’ve no record of your kind. Where are you from?”
The Beth made a raspy wet sound with her throat and looked up at the ceiling, when the green circles in her eyes sparkled like interstellar frost. The rest of her was difficult to look at, but these strange eyes were profoundly more beautiful than the wisps of lithium clouds diffracting the morning sun into rainbows during his home moon’s sluggish dawn.
“Denver,” she said.
“What do you last remember?” asked the Eye.
“I was in a dark space,” said the Beth. “Sloan was there, holding my hand.”
“Who is the Sloan?”
“She’s my wife. And who—what are you?”
The Meeker let loose a spray of pheromone-scented mucus. “I’m the Meeker, your humble pilot! And this is the Great All-Seeing Eye!”
“But what are you?”
The Eye collapsed into a torus. “This will take time to explain.”
“I’m freezing. Do you have any clothes?”
Freezing? the Meeker thought. It was hot enough to melt water ice!
But with the Eye’s help, the Beth covered herself in white fabrics. He didn’t understand why she needed to sheathe herself in an artificial skin when she already wore a natural one.
“I’m not well,” she said, holding her head.
The Eye floated beside her. “It may be a side-effect of your regeneration.”
“No. I’m sick.”
“Are you referring to the genetic material rapidly replicating inside your cells?”
“You know about the virus?”
“I observed the phenomenon when I created you, but I assumed it was part of your natural genetic pattern.”
“No. It most definitely isn’t. Do you have any water?”
A clear cylinder materialized on a table beside her.
“Oh,” the Beth said, flinching. “That will take some getting used to.”
She poured the searing hot liquid into her mouth, but her hands shook and she spilled half onto the floor. Red lines spiraled in from the corners of her eyes. “Is anyone else here?”
The Eye’s toroid body rippled. “Just the three of us.”
“No other humans?”
“According to my estimation, the stone was drifting in space for five hundred million years. It is likely that you’re the last of your kind.”
“So… Sloan is dead?”
“Yes.”
“But she was just beside me!”
“From your perspective. In reality, that moment occurred millions of years ago.”
The Beth put a hand to her mouth. “Oh my god…”
“Yes?” said the Eye.
The Beth gazed at the Eye for a long moment, then her eyes narrowed. “Sloan whispered to me, just before I woke up. She said she had a message for the future, for whoever wakes me. It was, she said, something that would change the course of history. A terrible fact that must be known.”
The Eye moved closer to her. “Tell me. Tell me this fact!”
“My son. He…” She swallowed. “He asphyxiated in the womb.”
“How terrible,” the Meeker said.
“Continue,” said the Eye.
“After, they did all these tests, and they discovered I had a virus. I had transmitted it to my unborn son. He never had a chance. Sloan said that my virus, the one that’s in my blood, it was from… it was created for… it was made by… Oh, god, I’m going to be—”
Her eyes rolled back into her head and she vomited yellow fluid onto the floor. She crashed forward and her head slammed into the table, then she shuddered in a violent paroxysm.
“What’s happening?” the Meeker said.
“It’s the virus,” said the Eye.
“Can you stop it?”
But the Beth stopped on her own, and all went still but for a faint hiss from her mouth.
“Hello?” he said.
“She’s dead,” said the Eye.
He felt a pang of panic. “But she’s only just come alive!” Was this brief glimpse all he would ever see of the Long Gone?
“Do not fret, Meeker. I am already creating another Beth.”
An hour later they sat in the cockpit, the Meeker on the left, the Beth in the middle, and the Eye on the right, as the Bulb hurtled toward the galactic center at half the speed of light.
The Beth had wrapped herself in a heavy blanket and pulled it close to her body. She seemed amazed with everything she saw. “But if we’re in space, where have all the stars gone?” A red dwarf, seven light years away, floated against a backdrop of absolute black.
“We harvested them,” the Meeker said, secreting a mucus of pride.