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“In a sense,” he replied. It sounded like the normal doctor. “Dr. Logus has kindly allowed me to store a body in this closet, which I can activate at any time.” He paused, as if realizing how bizarre the whole concept was. “It is faster than walking, and I enjoy visiting Arn. He is a friend of mine, if you were unaware.”
“Oh,” she replied. “I thought you could only use one body most of the time?”
“I simply deactivated my other body and switched to this one. It is very swift.”
Moving to the chair Logus had vacated, Y sat down. He looked ungainly in a human-sized chair, with his long legs. “Now, Apollonia, would you like to talk to me?”
“Yeah,” she said, feeling awkward in a whole new way. She certainly had not expected Dr. Y to really come, and certainly not so fast.
Suddenly, she felt completely out of her league. Like a fool.
These people were serious, weren’t they? Serious about their work, serious about helping her. And she had to look like, to them, a selfish child.
“I had a good reason for not talking to him,” she said, defensively.
“Oh? I am certain that you did, Nor. Would you like to tell me why that is? I will tell no one else, but secrets are a burden to bear and you need not carry them alone.”
She struggled – not just with herself, but with his easy honesty. Because unlike almost anyone else she met, when Dr. Y spoke she found herself believing him.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, her voice frustrated. “I just don’t know!”
She felt a stinging in her eyes, and she put a hand up to her face in shock.
Tears?
Shame flooded through her. She had not cried in years, and here she was – making even more of a fool of herself in front of the one being whose opinion actually mattered to her.
“Nor, it is okay to feel things,” Y said gently. “You are human.”
“That’s easy for you to say, Y. You’re perfect,” she said. But her voice was not angry, not mocking or disparaging. She felt like he truly was.
The machine looked struck; despite his expressionless metal face, his body language stiffened, recoiling in his seat.
He seemed to struggle to find words, and Apollonia realized just how deeply she must have cut him.
“Y, I . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-“
“You do not need to apologize, Nor. I simply . . . I did not realize that you felt this way.
“But you are wrong. I, too, am flawed,” he said. “I feel insecure. I make mistakes. I do my best to avoid them, and for me that means running millions or even billions of simulations to determine the best course of action. Even then, there is rarely a clear answer. I have failed at things, Nor – I promise you that.”
She looked away, taking a tissue and wiping her face. “Do you ever get embarrassed?” she asked.
“Yes. In my way. I often revisit such moments and run simulations on how I could have better handled each situation. Yet, I cannot change the past and such reminiscing is not actually useful. I have long since learned all I needed to learn to do better next time.”
She sniffed and said nothing, but was struggling.
“You can talk as freely as you like. Perhaps . . . you should talk more about how you felt after you went onto the Medical Station. What did you see?”
Hesitating, she glanced around. “We’re not being recorded, are we?”
“No, Nor. We are not. I was sure to check when I came in.”
She leaned forward, and when she spoke, it was a fierce whisper.
“I saw a lot of things. But that woman – Verena? – she’s not what she looks like.”
He again looked surprised, though not as dramatically as before. “What do you mean?”
“She’s empty, Y. She’s like . . . a hollow cup. Where normally everyone is filled. Filled with feelings, love and hate and confusion and arousal and fear – everything in little bits, a jumble, but she – she’s empty. There’s nothing in there.”
Y did not move. She started to fear he had gone offline or something, when he suddenly leaned forward, placing his metal elbows on his knees.
“There is much I am not free to say regarding Dr. Urle’s present condition. I cannot betray her trust. But I ask you to believe me, Nor, when I tell you that she is not a person you need fear. I deeply understand why you feel this way. You are not the only one to notice that she is . . . different in some way.”
She felt a prickle on the back of her neck. Like there was something more – that she was still seeing more.
“What happened at the Battle of Terris?” she asked him.
Y hitched slightly, as if having a glitch. She read it as him being caught off-guard. “Nor, respectfully, that has little to do with the current-“
“I think I need to know, Y,” she said. “I’ve heard people mention it, and when they do, they react to it in the same way as when we came to this place. It’s connected somehow, isn’t it?”
The doctor seemed to be struggling with how to answer.
“I don’t want to know secrets, Y. I just need to know what you can tell me,” she explained. “I actually tried looking this up, but there’s . . . I know there’s a memorial, but very little is said about why.”
Y seemed to make up his mind.
“I must tell you something now, Nor, something that is upsetting.”
“Okay,” she replied, steeling herself.
“Seven years, three months, and seventeen days ago, contact was made outside of the Terris System. A Leviathan, at that time one of the largest encountered, was discovered. It was on a course that would bring it to Terris Prime.”
“Oh my god,” she breathed.
Y continued on. His voice inexorable. “The Terris system had a population of nearly 200 billion people at that time. It was a prosperous and peaceful colony. When the discovery was made, there was less than a day left before it entered the fringes of the system.”
“Did everyone get out?” she asked.
“No, Nor. I am afraid that is not what happened.” The doctor seemed scared, shrunken in a way, as he spoke. “Attempts were made – with loss of life – to lead the Leviathan away. Nothing proved effective at the time. And so the Sapient Union mobilized.
“In hindsight, it was an incredible thing – almost 60,000 ships were brought together to confront the Leviathan. All personnel not considered essential for action were evacuated, and the fleet moved to intercept it while almost 200,000 more ships that were not combat-ready were brought in to help evacuate the population of the Terris colonies.”
She couldn’t think of anything to say. She had never seen a Leviathan, only seen crappy films that portrayed them as forces of nature. But the stories of them had a life of their own among spacers. Sometimes, she even wondered if she had seen them in her dreams and blocked out the memory.
“The path of the Leviathan would put the colonized planet, where the majority of the colonists lived, within its Reality Break Shadow,. Time had to be bought.
“And so the fleet at Terris engaged the Leviathan. It was thought that massed fire at range could stop if – if not destroy it outright, at least dissuade it from its path. But nothing worked, Nor. The rounds fired by the fleet at Terris did nothing. By the time the projectiles reached the being, they had ceased to even exist as we define objects. Thus, the fleet had only one option.”
Her eyes widened. “No, they didn’t . . .”
“I see you understand. Yes, the fleet moved closer, within the outer edges of the Reality Break Shadow, to begin attacking at such a range that their projectiles might exist long enough to reach it.”
Y shook his head. “I would never have suggested it. But the crews of those ships were very brave beings who were not afraid to die. They set up everything so that even if they lost control they would fire.”
When he spoke again, his voice itself was different. “It still did nothing, Nor. Those ships dipped in and out, firing everything they had. But the Leviathan was, as far as we know, not even hurt.”
He lapsed into silence, and she said nothing for several long moments.
“When the battle – as we euphemistically call it – was over, a third of the ships were destroyed. Another third were heavily damaged.”
“And the colony?”
“The problem was the reality of moving all of the people into space. Every space elevator was used until they were starting to break apart. Any ship that could land and then re-escape the gravity well went down, but there are just practical limits. However, in this, a miracle occurred. Only thirty million people were left on Terris when the Leviathan arrived.”
Thirty million, she repeated in her mind.
“Some of the rescue ships continued to land even though they were almost guaranteed not to be able to get back out in time. They still had to try, and I understand that.
“By that time, the fleet was limping away. On the ships that escaped, a third of all crew died. It seems that with Leviathans, there is some strange connection to thirds that simply makes no sense.”
“What about the rest?”
“Again, we come to thirds. A third were all right – this includes several members of the command staff of the Craton. Captain Brooks was there . . . and so was Verena Urle. This is a matter of public record.”
Apollonia’s heart skipped a beat. “Are you sure she survived? Are you sure that’s her?”
“Yes, Nor. I am certain. But to say anymore would reveal details beyond your right to know. However, I believe that you can infer now why, when you look at her, you see . . . an empty cup.”
She let herself fall back in her seat, trying to comprehend that. What could have altered the woman so much that she . . . became that? Was she truly even still there?
Going over her memories, she realized that even if the woman felt empty, she did still feel like a person. Just . . . half of a person. Someone maimed on the inside.
But someone who had, apparently, pressed on.
“What about the last third?” she asked. “What happened to them?”
“Ah,” Y said. “Those people were the most unfortunate of all. One third of those survivors suffered severe mutations. Their condition was horrifying – not only for themselves, but for their crew mates. Ninety percent of them would go on to die in . . . one way or another. But all were maimed in ways that could never be healed.”
He gestured in a direction, and Apollonia realized he must mean the Medical Station. “That is why The Chain is in deep space. All of those altered survivors live here. They will live here for the rest of their lives, Nor. We do what we can for them – we give our all for them, to give them the best care possible. But . . . there is little we can do. That is what Dr. Verena Urle faces every day. I know that, for you, she may appear to be something . . . wrong. But she is a fearless person who has given everything to help others affected worse than her.”
Apollonia felt numb.
“I am sorry to have told you this now. It was not what I believe was best for your current state. It is . . . difficult even for me to speak of. It is one of the darkest hours in the history of the Sapient Union. But you asked, and I know that if you kept digging, you would learn about this on your own.”
She could not make herself look at the doctor. “I . . . I understand. And I think you just helped, Doctor.”
“How so?” he asked, sitting up straighter.
“Because it tells me why I felt what I did when I went on. Dr. Urle is . . . blank. I blamed her, but she wasn’t the source of my initial feel – it’s that place itself.”
She forced herself to meet his electronic eyes again. “It’s the suffering and the fear of the people in there. I felt it – all of it.”
Other Terrestrial 