I wake up on a ship. I try to move my hands to my face, to rub the sleep from my eyes. I can't. I look up, see binders. What the... I remember the bar. The sugar. Blue Lotus...Something. I can't think straight. Something in the tea, in the sugar. I look over as best I can, see a logo on the binders. Same as on the sugar packet. Wonderful. That tells me nothing. I'm struck with a thought. What if it was all an elaborate ruse? What if I've been traced, arrested? Panic rises like bile in my throat. I'm alone, I can't think, I can't move, I. Can't. Get. OUT. I need freedom, I have to move, be alive! There, a shoe! I call, hoping against hope to learn what is happening to me. It's the man from the bar. He stoops, even more like a bird. I ask him what is going on. He smiles, a terrible, terrible smile. Welcome to the Blue Lotus Syndicate vessel Callista, he says. I stare stupidly. What does that mean, I ask. He tells me that means that I am now on my way to Malta to grow cardamine. He tells me that I am a slave. That I am in solitary confinement. He doesn't say why. I ask him who he is, but he just laughs, a sound that I learn to hate. I hate this man.
I can't sleep. All I can think about is Carl, lying on the ground. I laugh inside, and as I do so, I die a little. I don't hate Carl, but I realize that I am in a very similar position. I'm on the ground, being whipped. Defiance is not welcome. Obedience is expected. Blood comes, comes freely. I hate this man too. He isn't the bird-man. Different. He's smaller, rounder. He has a red face that sweats, and a bald head that glistens in the dim lights. He grunts a bit as he swings the lash again. Pain. Burning through me. I think I black out for a while. When I come to, I'm back in my cell. It's barely larger than me. More a locker than a cell. My hands are bound above me, making sleep impossible. The only times I get out are to exercise and be beaten. I get beaten often. They force us to exercise, to grow stronger for working the fields. I refuse to exercise, so they beat me. I think that may be why I'm kept in solitary. Or part of it. My back is raw, bloody. The scabs don't last long. The next beating makes sure that I can never heal. I only hope to die now.
It's been days. Weeks. I don't know. All I know is it's been far too long. I'm here, among the smells of death, blood, and human filth. I feel alone. I feel hurt. But most of all, I feel hate. I hate the bird-man, the "quartermaster", the other sniveling slaves. I've even come to hate Carl, my parents, the police investigating my parent's deaths. I've come to realize that all humanity is to be despised. I don't regret killing my parents. They deserved it. They were human. They were pawns, tools in the hands of a grand ideal. They stole our heritage by existing. Humans. Stole. Our heritage. Humans stole. Heritage. Stolen. Use. Use humans. We use them, despise them, kill them. My eyes fly open. That was not me thinking. That was me. We. I/we/they/us are together again? I/we had not heard from them/us since the voyage began. Are we to be reunited at last?
Robert Foster stood on the bridge alone. Surrounding him was the cruiser Tundra, the most ambitious project of Altair Research Station to date. He paused a moment to stroke a console and smiled. For some captains, their ships might seem to be alive, responding before the command was given. Tundra really was alive. The former Liberty Navy cruiser was one-of-a-kind. Foster had been infested by Nomads when Tundra was first engulfed by a Marduk in battle, and since then the entire ship had been slowly eaten away, leaving much of it an organic construct with very little save the reactor and engines to suggest it had ever been constructed of metal. Foster turned back to the window and let out a contented sigh. Out there, in the void, was one to be found. One to be returned. The Mindshare was adamant that Foster and the Tundra seek and find her. The girl had bonded, after all. The shockwaves of her pain rippled through the entire collective. Darkness was near her. Light must be brought. Light would be brought. The Tundra moved relentlessly, tearing asteroids asunder that would hinder its progress. Light is coming.
She felt something in the back of her mind, like a reassuring hand on her shoulder. She relaxed, fitful sleep fading into a deep rest. The binders noticed the relaxing of her strain on them, and loosened just a bit to prevent damaging her wrists further. It was enough. We gently suggested movements for her sleeping arms, and guided her hands. They slipped out, ever so slowly. We succeeded. Now it was time for the escape. We wake her. She is astonished. We smile and take our leave. She tries to follow, but cannot. We pity her, ask Tundra to come faster. Tundra comes.
I can't believe it. Somehow my hands are free. I groan as the new scabs tear, releasing a fresh bath of my blood across my already stained back. I try to reach the lock. I fumble with it, but I can't open it. I consider kicking it out, but the noise will surely wake my captors and bring them scrambling. I can't chance that. Not this close to freedom. Wait. What's this? Something under me...A bit of metal. Perhaps...Yes! I work it into the crevice between the door and jam, working it down towards the lock. There is no bolt, only a latch. They trust their binders too far, I think. I slide the scrap under the latch, twist it just so. I sit there, dumbfounded. I am free. Free of the locker. Free to tidy up the tools. I will start with the bird-man and quartermaster.
I am a demon, I am an angel. I bring death to these two, not a swift one either. I take the whip from the fat one and garrote him with it. He struggles in vain, tugging, pulling at the implement of his doom. He gasps his last as his tongue protrudes and eyes bulge. Stupid human. The thin one I hit with a hammer I find. He goes down, a nasty lump forms on his forehead, the least of his worries. I drag him to the airlock, remove the controls from the inside, and shut him in it. I take the remote and hold it up to the porthole. He wakes. He puts a hand to his head, stops. He looks around him. He sees me, smiling in that same horrible way. He opens his mouth to plead, but I let that silver tongue be forever still. I press the button that will slowly, ever so slowly, let the air out of the chamber.
Katherine went to the bridge, skirting the body of the quartermaster as she did so. The entire ship stank of their contamination. She found the overrides and sealed the rest of the crew in their chambers, in the engine room, wherever they were. She vented the cargo bay, bodies of slaves flying out into space like so much confetti. Then she released halon gas into the crew areas. Oxygen, bound by the fire-retardant molecules, ceased being conducive to life. One by one, the crew suffocated. She smiled grimly, checked the scanners. Nothing. Wait. There is something, but it is faint. She starts: They return. She and they run together in that constant stream of all. A thousand thousand points of light flash in the edges of forever, each an entity of the shared consciousness, glowing brightly. They glisten and fade, some flashing into existence, others vanishing, reappearing, as a form is lost and reborn. It is eternity of the mind.
The Tundra docked with the ship called Callista. Such a pitiful shadow of the way a true form could merge with a larger one. Once Katherine renewed the atmosphere, she crossed over into a new world. Wonder in her eyes, she walked the halls of a ship not just made by hands, but shaped by organic minds. The ship, Tundra, was alive. Robert Foster walked down to meet her, met her halfway down the corridor running the spine of the ship. She gasped when she saw him, for it was the face she had imagined when the other had first met her. A monotone he spoke in, but every nuance of meaning was conveyed through the shared minds for her to read.
"Hello, Katherine. We welcome you home."
I couldn't breathe. At last. At long, long last I was here. I ran to him, arms wide. I was safe. I was free. I clasped him to me, and he bent his head:
"Will you join us? Will you be one, be whole?"
I never wanted to say yes more in my life, and I did. He kissed me, and I felt something slither from his mouth to mine. It settled at the back of my throat, slid back. I didn't gag, didn't need to. There was a slight twinge as the thing merged with me. An incredible sensation flowed through me, every nerve afire. Tendrils ran from the back of my neck up into my head. I couldn't help but giggle. They tickled! The whip marks on my back writhed, rippled, flowed over, healed! I watched, glanced around, fascinated, as every wound on my body was repaired. I welcomed the changes. I didn't want to be alone ever again, and I knew I wouldn't ever be. It settled into me, merged. My mind roiled as it was totally, irreversibly connected to another, others, and eternity. And then I wasn't me.
We go to the bridge, turn, face the metal shell. We ask Tundra to destroy it, to erase its taint from this universe of ours. Tundra agrees, this blight must end. The great ship moves, aims, and fires. The blast cuts the shield from the shell as if it were not even there, cuts it in two. The atmosphere inside billows, flares, rushes outwards only to ignite in the field. The Callista-shell burns, and we know peace.
I watched, fascinated, as my body moved without me. I was the second person in the paired skydive, the trainee pilot. I had no control, no facilities, nothing. I’ve been deleted from the universe but who I was remained. I still existed. My body existed. But I and my body no longer were one. Instead, I felt it between myself and what had been my body. It’s almost like a dream where you’re floating. You can see things, but the scenery changes without warning. You can’t affect anything in the flow. You just…observe. That’s who I am right now—an observer, watching the world through my own eyes. It doesn’t worry me as much as I thought it might, because I’m not alone in this head of mine. There are others, so many others. The entire Mindshare flows through the body I inhabit.
I watch, incredulous, as the body I ride pilots a ship, flying to defend us all. We fire, blazes of energy catching other metal shells, sending them tumbling into the void before they vanish in a cloud of fire. We capture pilots where we can, dragging them into the hold of our ship. They are fearful, they rage, plead, bargain, try to kill themselves. We prevent that. We take the useful ones, the tools we can use. The others we ignore, throw aside, flawed.
I hear the voices that echo, great rumblings and crashings as titans of mind speak and all listen. Smaller voices, with no less authority, speaking to human minds, controlling, directing, seeking something. I am not privy to the deepest thoughts of what is called Mindshare, I know not what we seek. I am curious, and I ask why and what we seek for. I am told it is no concern, that we will find what we need as we need it. The voice that answers me is immense, eternal, greater by far than all I have ever seen or heard or felt or know. I stop asking.
They tell me that I distract, trying to see and question. I stop, but sometimes I ask again. They stop letting me see now, and I am to ponder things. I think about my home, the one I left behind.
As my mind slept, my body ceased to send it information. I feel nothing, see nothing, and hear nothing. I am cut off, an island adrift in eternity.
Days pass, weeks. I dont know how long. It feels like eternities flicker past, giving the barest smile as they fly away. I begin to realize I was insane. By realizing that, does it make me not insane? Its said that the insane dont think they are, but am I cursing myself to die completely insane, deluded into thinking Ive become sane once more? Or is that just another insanity? I know now that I never did hate the rest of humanity, never hated my parents. The Nomadstheir beauty belies a hideous truth. They are pure malevolence given form.
I hate myself now, more than anything. I gave up my chance at a normal life, and for what? I could have been another airheaded teen, another person who went through life with no aims and no goals other than to find another guy and more drugs. I could have been a nothing, a nobody. Would I go back and be that if I could? I dont know, Im not sure if Id even want to be normal. What is normal? I cant help but laugh to hear that word now, and hearing my laughter scares me. Its the laugh of the hopelessly insane, echoing inside my head.
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