During the message delay, Ashley rubbed his eyes, ruminating over Felicity’s state of mind. Why would she procrastinate her end? For me?
A fair number of people went rogue, some sooner, even as young as a thousand years, while others lasted much longer. Rogue: a loss of purpose, a loss of hope. That dreadful realization that people of great age must face constantly: how alone one is in the vast Universe, how little humanity meant to it, and how little difference one can make in the grand scheme of Nature—even making a galaxy was tiny compared to the totality of all creation. Well, maybe for some.
The reasons for going rogue were unique to the individual. Most often, it seemed rogue was purely a conscious decision to end one’s own existence. With use of retroviruses, and other techniques, all emotions could be controlled. And in some forms, humans had no emotions. He felt love for Felicity because he chose to. He could stop the emotion any time he wanted. However, even if he did so, he’d still sense a loss. Felicity and he had grown together on a purely intellectual level over the megallennia. She had become a facet of his mind, and he hers.
He sighed, realizing that this situation had been building for quite some time. He’d known she’d gone rogue many megallennia ago, but had not been willing to admit it to himself until recently, when faced with his last few moments talking to the person he had loved for so long. Sure they’d drifted apart from time to time over the megallennia as they changed forms, traded sexes, and explored many other new things, but they always came back together, always found each other again. No one else that he’d loved had been that way.
“I… I don’t want to hurt you, Ashley. I’ve given you as much time as I can. But I can’t stay around any longer. My time to go has arrived.”
There was a chance here, he was sure. “Felicity, your life is important to me. Isn’t that enough to keep living?”
The pause seemed longer than normal.
“Y—you’ll find someone else. After all, you’ve got megallennia to look. Please don’t forget that.”
He felt sadness—even with his ability to control the emotion, it seemed appropriate to let it happen. It already seemed like she was gone. His best lead didn’t work. There was little else to do. “If you crash, I’ll fly over and pummel Medio with asteroids.” He couldn’t think of anything better.
Nothing more convincing came to him as he awaited Felicity’s reply.
“Ha! I don’t believe you for a second. You’re not a destroyer of worlds.”
“Listen… please stop and think about this. There’ll be more Medios. More Anclajes. Take some more time to consider your decision—there’s plenty of that. Please.”
He waited.
Twenty-seven million kilometers closer to Spindown, Felicity’s voice arrived. “I’ve thought about it. And I’ve made my decision. Medio’s fate is sealed. It won’t die this time.”
“The neutron stars’ orbital velocity has now exceeded ten percent the speed of light,” reported Zephyr.
Feeling helpless, he looked at Spindown’s hologram. The blurred disks now formed a torus, one growing redder on one side, while becoming bluer on the other. It was contracting. The rapid motion set up huge gravity waves, bleeding off the system’s angular momentum, causing the two stars to M together faster with each revolution. With the stars moving at a third the speed of light, the final orbit would last just a millisecond. The resulting explosion would throw part of the star’s mass outward in two thick jets moving at an appreciable velocity of c. The spinning jets would collide with themselves and the disk matter, making huge shock waves and heating to millions of degrees. At the center would reside a single coalesced spheroid, flattened from its high rate of spin, or a black hole if too little mass was thrown by the impact. It’d be a collision that would, for a brief instant in time, generate more energy than all the Universe’s suns. If he convinced Felicity not to crash.
The hill’s angle lessened, and the trees thinned to a few squat, windswept needle-leafed varieties. “We’re almost to the top,” Trajan said, between labored breaths. His exhalations produced puffs of steam in the cool air.
“Borde looks beautiful!” Sage’s voice was full of emotion.
He looked up at the large crescent of the outer moon, seeing swirling white storms, and deep blue seas. It stood out visibly in a sky that graded from pink to cobalt from a setting sun. “Yes, it does. Almost as beautiful as you.”
She smiled at him. “Thank you.” Her eyes carried a happy look.
He heard a rustling noise behind him and turned out of curiosity. It sounded like a large animal, and they’d just seen small ones so far. He saw the oval leaves of a dense crawling shrub underneath a wind sculpted tree.
Sage stepped next to him. Her elbow brushed his arm, leaving a warm, tingling sensation in its wake. “What is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but something’s in there.” He stepped closer. Sage followed. Even with the distraction hiding in the shrub, he found her closeness enticing.
He saw motion under a wiry branch, and a brief glint. An eye. Four eyes. He could just make out the shape of the head, a spherical form with a flat face, and a slightly protruding beak for a mouth. Hair hung from its scalp, easily as long as Sage’s; it touched the ground, the creature was so squat. Is it lying down? Yes.
Trajan pointed at the creature. “It’s right there. Appears to be some kind of endoskeletal animal.”
Sage glanced in the direction of his finger, her eyes opened wide in anticipation. “Oh, yes, I see it now.”
The creature hooted several times, a loud sound that echoed off nearby granite cliffs.
“What’s it doing?”
Trajan looked around. “I bet it has friends.”
He was right. In a matter of seconds, several hairy’ heads poked up through the underbrush. He got a clear look at one as it walked between bushes, eying him. They had eight limbs spread between two “thoraxes.” Four limbs on the hind-thorax were used for locomotion, while the fore-thorax was carried above the ground, limbs free. The front two of the free limbs were highly atrophied, and carried next to the head, while the other two were long and thin, with equally thin digits at their ends. The creature gripped a broken branch with those fingers.
“Murfle,” mumbled Sage.
“Step back,” said Trajan, though he wasn’t too worried. He’d already contacted Persephone, and she had a satellite maser ready to fire if need be. Though he didn’t really want that. He didn’t enjoy killing, this was the natives’ world, and these creatures had no idea what they were up against—about as innocent as anything could be.
Sage grabbed his arm firmly, and together they stepped back, moving up the gradual slope. Rocky soil crunched under their feet.
The strange animals froze and watched.
“I think things are going to be OK,” Trajan whispered. “Just need to give them some room.”
“Yes.”
A light breeze picked up, one that fluttered Sage’s long hair and played it across his back. The gentle patter was alluring.
When they had stepped back about twenty meters, the creature in the shrub stood up. It carried something.
“A baby!” said Sage in a loud whisper, apparently unable to control her excitement.
Trajan decided he’d have to try free emotions again one day.
“How pretty,” Sage continued as she watched the mother and child with an open-mouthed smile.
“Ah, protecting their young. In a group and using crude tools.”