New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

Alexander raced to the door when the announcement came.

Opening it, he ground to a halt against the door frame.  “Commander Yaepanaya, I’m so glad you’re here!”

He had gotten a brief reply from Jaya just a few minutes ago, asking just how important his situation was.  He had told her ‘vital’, and she had agreed to come.

She did not look very pleased, though; her face showed both weariness and slight irritation, but she nodded calmly.  “You said it was important.”

“Yes,” he said.  “Yes, come in!”  He jogged back towards his computer.  “I have a lot of evidence here, but I’ve made a discovery that I think could be of grave importance to the ship’s safety.”

“Go on,” Jaya said, following him over.

“Father Cathal Sair is a Cerebral Reader,” he said in a rush.  “And that’s not wrong or bad, of course, but if he’s hiding it we should know, shouldn’t we?  I mean-“

“We do know,” Jaya told him.  “His status as a CR is known to us.”

Alexander looked shocked, mouth agape.

“It is his personal business,” Jaya said.  “He is not employed or even a citizen of the Union, so it was not made public information.”

She began to turn.  “If that is all-“

“No!”  Alexander said.  “Tell me – are there any other CRs that you know of on the ship?”

Jaya looked more annoyed.  “It is their personal information if there was-“

“I’m not asking for names!  Are there two CRs – or more?”

Jaya frowned.  “I will only answer this because you already have a low-level clearance.  There are only the two.”

Alexander nodded slowly, realizing that he was not in the wrong here.  “There’s another.  One who hasn’t revealed themselves.  Look at my data.”

He brought it up.  “I noticed that unexpected and unique errors have been cropping up in the DNA I’ve been building for an agricultural project.  These events do not line up with known encounters of strong cosmic winds or rays.  But what they do synch up with is every time Father Sair or Apollonia Nor walk by my DNA.  Every time the public data shows that they’ve walked by, I’ve gotten these mutations.  But they don’t account for every incident – so that means there is another source.”

He paused for a breath, and Jaya held up a hand.

“I know what you’re about to say!” he continued quickly.  “I checked Ambassador Kell’s data, but he doesn’t fill in the gaps.  He doesn’t even come down here, Commander.  I think . . . no, I feel confident this means that there is at least one more CR on board the ship.  I have been trying to look through the public data to find out who – but that’s taking some time, since it has to check the entire population!”

He swallowed.  “But there’s something even more important here.  My data shows that there is similarity between the radiation that they are emitting . . . and that which was recorded, in my plant DNA, during the incident at The Chain.”

Jaya’s eyes snapped to him, widening.

He nodded.  “I know that whatever happened there was dangerous.  It threatened not just The Chain, but the Craton, too.  I know that . . .  something strange happened there, that Apollonia Nor and Kell were both involved in its resolution.”

“How do you know all of that?” Jaya demanded.  “And what else do you know?”

“I know what I’ve heard in rumors and . . . well, my wife is a Response officer.  Whether or not I want to, I learn things,” he admitted.  Suddenly it seemed a bad idea to be telling this to Commander Yaepanaya.

But Jaya began to nod slowly.  “How certain are you?  That these CRs are emitting radiation similar to the . . . event at the Chain?”

“Very,” he said.  “The evidence is clear.  Whatever it is, it’s so subtle that our radiation detection systems don’t pick it up.  But it’s got unique qualities that only they share.  There is a connection here.”  He paused, swallowing.  “Is this . . . dangerous to the ship?”

Jaya knew that it was.

She had not been completely involved in, or aware of all details of what had happened at The Chain.

Until she had become Acting Captain for months at Ko.  Then she had been able to access things of a higher secrecy.

She could not tell him, but it all made sense now.  The strange powers of CRs, no one could explain them.  It had something to do with zerospace.  Many had theorized, but not found evidence.

But here, this man may have found it.

A CR was a host to an Embrion, just as Michal Denso had been at The Chain.  An unborn Leviathan.

There was a noise, then.  Jaya could not register what it was before she was thrown by the impact, hitting the wall with a hard thud.

She saw flashes in her eyes, and a peculiar alert went off in her ears.  She knew instantly what it meant:

She had just been hit with a massive dose of radiation.

---

Apollonia’s body strained against the invisible bonds that held her, and Cathal watched her with pity in his heart.

This was the moment he had to decide.  He could strike with the knife.  With the spilling of her blood, her life would end.

And then the Embrion that was a part of her would migrate to the takwin he had prepared.  Its power would become something he could control.

But if he just waited . . .  she might Awaken.

He could not bring himself to kill her.

He had been told to.  But he would not do it.

If she lived now was up to her.  It was not guaranteed.

There remained only one thing he could do to help her.

The knife pressed against his robe, cutting through it.  He dragged the blade against his skin, pushing harder.  The pain was a sharp jolt as his skin parted under its edge, and he felt the warm trickle of his own blood as it ran down his chest.

“In my blooded hands . . .” he hissed out through the pain.  “I shall guide Thee to our Truth . . .”

The cut dragged out over inches, the sharp pain turning to a fire across his chest.  First one side, then the other, two crossing lines.

“My spirit . . .  and my faithful . . .”

He dragged the knife away from his body, the x-shaped furrows the blade had left on him reflected in the apparition that was before him.

He gazed into his reflected eyes, but in them he no longer saw himself, but the Other, the Little One Who Speaks.  It slept, it dreamed.  In its dreams, it shared with him a mote of its power and its knowledge.

“Show me now,” he breathed.  “Give me a touch of eternity.”

It stirred.  Its slightest movement that he felt all through his body and soul.

He was an unworthy husk, a shell of a being.  He had only this one gift, the most wonderful of services to perform for the universe.

Tears slipped from his eyes, as the Little One Who Speaks obeyed him, and he saw within the Craton everything.  Every secret, every lie, every corner.  Even what he did not understand he would remember.

The ship burned, part of it ablaze; the spillover of the death of the Dark Star, channeled through the temple by accident.  The event that had led to its abandonment.

Thousands of people on the Craton were dying at this moment, poisoned by the stream of charged particles let in by even the brief weakening in part of its magnetosphere.

One life there, he saw, was Alexander.

Such a good faithful, he thought.  He truly liked the man, his presence here had been missed.

He should not have to die like this.

---

Pirra felt the blood running down her face, down her body.  She did not remember being hurt, or know where it came from.

Her blood, the blood of everyone here, was flowing across the floor, up towards the altar.

Just like it had for the Source on the pirate ship.

She shook with rage, her helplessness from that moment returned, and she loathed it.

Her very being wanted to charge his man, to kill him with her bare hands.

But she could not move.  She could not do anything.

Even when something hit the ship, shaking it, and she knew she must be needed . . . she could do nothing.

Her vision of Cathal doubled; there appeared to be a duplicate of him up there, like a mirror reflection, hovering just in front of him as he slashed himself with his knife, leaving a bloody, x-shaped wound on his chest.

Then he threw his head back, and she no longer saw the reflection.  Instead, she grew weaker and weaker.  The room was starting to spin, and she felt herself start to fall.

---

< Ep 13 part 31 | Ep 13 part 33 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

“I don’t like the look of this,” Nadian said.

It was a sentiment that all who remained were sharing.

Brooks, Kat, and Nadian had been watching their approach to the dark star with trepidation.  Kell seemed unfazed; and in the back, Fromm was burying his head in his hands, mumbling to himself.

The man had been a terrible pick for this, Brooks thought, with both pity and frustration.  If Apollonia had been here, she’d still be capable.

But it made him glad to think she was safe.

“Whatever defenses this thing has, I doubt they can hold up if we start diving into the star’s corona,” Kat said.

“We already are in it,” Brooks said.  “A star this big, its corona will be massive.  We must be inside it by now.”  He glanced about the room.  “If this vessel is using magnetic fields to protect itself, what I’m most worried about is when we hit the chromosphere.  This star is highly active, and the chance of us hitting a plasma jet are high.  We’re lucky we haven’t already-“

“Incoming,” Nadian said.

Brooks looked out, and saw that just what he had spoken of was blasting towards them.  The speed of it, well tens of kilometers a second, far too fast for them to avoid even if they could have controlled the ship.

They flinched as the jet of plasma hit them.  It seemed to engulf the ship completely, and Brooks knew that he was about to die.

Yet nothing happened.

He rose, cautiously.  The entire screen was covered in a brilliant glow.  It had to have been dimmed significantly, and he could see patterns in the plasma that showed the lines of magnetic field that had caused the plasma burst.

“Kell,” he said, his voice hoarse.  He felt shaken and weak from the realization that he was not about to die.  “Is the ship all right?”

Kell did not answer him.

Instead, he found himself once again in that white space of nothingness where he had encountered the Present Mind earlier.

Maybe this was what being dead was like, he thought with grim amusement.

“You are not dead,” a voice replied.  It was his own voice again, but speaking out loud, coming from everywhere.

He scowled.  “Do you have a default form?  Take that and show yourself, Present Mind.”

It appeared before Brooks, and his heart jumped again as he realized just what it was he was looking at.

It was a massively tall being, just over three meters in height.  Its body was shield-shaped, its head armored and fused into its trunk, leaving no details exposed.  Very long and thin legs came from what one might expect to be the shoulders, and smaller arms were folded up on the lower, pointed tip of its body.

It matched the descriptions of those who had seen the Source; the ancient, withered body that had been in the sarcophagus that the Greggan pirates had discovered.  But this was not a withered husk, resembling instead a living being.

His heart pounded faster, gazing up at the face that showed nothing.

It was one of the creators of Kell’s kind, those who had once ruled the stars and molded the universe like clay-

“My creators are many and varied,” the Present Mind said.  There was a hum of words from within its shelled head, but its real voice was directly into his mind.

Only now it did not mimic him, but was alien and intrusive, almost staggering him by its very strength and leaving behind a strange feeling of numbness.

“You see why I attempted forms more familiar to yourself,” it said.

“Is the ship in danger?” he asked the thing, trying to push through the impression it left in his mind.  There were thoughts, alien thoughts, left in him that were hard to understand.

“No,” the Present Mind replied.  “Your panic is unbecoming.”

The rebuke was annoying, but he ignored it.  “Where are we going?  Why into the star?”

“You are moving into position.”

“Position for what?  As obvious as this may all be to you and your creators, to us it makes no sense.”

“To see,” the Present Mind replied.  There was a stronger sense of the last word in his mind, as if it meant far more than the simple word implied.

“Explain, please,” Brooks said.  “What can we see?”

“My creators could see all of the universe,” the Present Mind told him.  “Where they could see, they could be.  But the universe of their time was smaller – and it grew.  It grew so large that to see those distant places was to look into the past.  Thus, the Enablings of Seeing were constructed.  This was among their greatest, harnessing the dark heart of this unnatural star to view more than the mundane universe.  With it was the hope to understand more – to understand all.”

The voice paused.  “But they miscalculated.”

Brooks felt nearly overwhelmed by all of the words sent into his mind.  But he needed to know more.  “Miscalculated how?  Is there danger still?”

“My creators understood time only as you do; a linear path one must follow.  It fit the universe that was observed – all except for the Great Ones, who they still desired to understand.  In creating this station they had hoped to learn the truth of them.”

The Present Mind paused.  “But instead, they destroyed the gate.”

The gate.  Kell had called it that as well.

If it meant a gateway to zerospace . . . he could see the logic.  There was a connection between gravity and zerospace portals.  It was how the Craton was able to move itself without reaction mass.

So this star, being as massive as it was, was it also a zerogate?

“Are you saying this station broke the star itself?  Is it destroyed in . . . at my point of linear time?  Is that why we don’t see it?  Is this a simulation?”

“Such a massive object cracked the reality under it, allowing free passage,” the Present Mind told him.  “But such an object could not stay stable.  I do not know if this was a mistake of the Great Ones or if this station destabilized the star.  But it became unstable . . .”  A note of regret came into its feelings.  “For which I am responsible.”

It shifted suddenly.  “The story begins.”

“What story?” Brooks asked.

“The one you wished to know.”

Brooks found himself back in the ship.

“We’re going deeper,” he heard Nadian say.  He was looking at something on a panel, and glanced up to look at Brooks.  “I’ve got a map of our location.”

“How did you do that?” Brooks asked, feeling unsteady on his feet.

“Careful,” Nadian said.  “The Present Mind packs a bit of a punch.”

Brooks could not hide the surprise on his face.  “You spoke to it?”

“Yeah,” Nadian said.  “I think we all did.”

“Why didn’t you mention it?” Brooks asked.

“Same reason you didn’t,” Nadian replied.  “Either you also had and were holding it back, or else I was the only one and you’d think I had gone nuts.”

Which was fair, Brooks thought.

Kat spoke.  “Fergus definitely had – that’s how he ‘figured out’ how to operate the controls.  I think that he asked it the wrong questions and got some bad advice.”

Brooks looked at her.  “It told me about the temple,” she said.  “That it’s . . . like an observatory.”

“One that was meant to observe Leviathans,” Brooks added.  He looked to Kell, whose expression was set grimly, almost daring Brooks to ask him something.

He looked back to Nadian instead.  “You asked it about the controls.”

“Yeah, well, a little.  It’s not the best teacher, but I got some idea.  Look – here’s where we are, I think.”

The screen outside was just a brilliant glow.  Sometimes in it he could see patterns of plasma flow within the star.

Over that a flat image appeared of a sphere with distinct layers.  There was a dot that likely represented them.

“It looks like we’re still in a convection zone, though the layering of this star is more complex than any I’ve seen,” Brooks said.

“Probably because it’s so massive,” Kat said.  “I estimate this one has almost a hundred million solar masses.  About as big as has ever been theorized.”

“My god,” Brooks said.  Such an object was far beyond what he could even imagine.

At this scale it would not even be a true star, living off the fusion of light elements.  Its core would be so dense and massive that it would collapse . . . leaving the star with a black hole for a heart.

“We’re speeding up,” Nadian said.

“You didn’t find out how to alter our course?” Brooks asked.

“The alien space station voice in my head didn’t get to that part,” Nadian replied.  “I’m not sure that it can even do it.  It seems like we’re locked in . . . to something.”

Kat pointed.  “I see something out there.”

Brooks and Nadian followed her gaze, and after a moment he realized that there was something in the star.  It was so huge that it filled the screen.

Only a general shape was visible; something massive, parts of it moving, feeling their way forward through the star.

It was not just some strange shape of plasma.  It was alive.

“Nothing could live in this,” Nadian said, rapt with both awe and fear.

“Except a Leviathan,” Brooks said.

As if the ship had heard his words, it all suddenly rocked, their view altering as the ship abruptly began to turn.

“What’s going on?” Kat cried, the ship shaking.

“It’s changing course!  It’s taking us back out of the star.”

Nadian grabbed Kat, pulling her with him towards the floor for safety against the rocking.  Brooks could not tear his eyes off of the shape before them.  They were withdrawing and turning, and he tried to follow it around, but it began to shrink from view.

Tobias Fromm staggered forward, putting out a hand towards the screen.

“No . . .” he said throatily.

The ship was accelerating at an insane speed, and they came out of the star in moments, moving at a rate that must have been a notable fraction of C, Brooks thought.

Yet as it came to a stop, he felt only the slightest tremor.

They held their position, Nadian and Kat slowly getting to their feet and staring with him.

The surface of the star erupted as something came out.  Dwarfed by the star, it still drew all attention.

It magnified on the screen, and Brooks felt himself nearly white out at the sight of it.

Its surface shimmered and reformed, from a slagged, scorched mess to wholeness, as if traversing the raging power of the dark star was only a mild inconvenience.

“No, no, no . . .” Fromm moaned, pressing his face to the glass.

Brooks understood why he was yelling.  He, too, recognized the Leviathan.  He could never forget it, and even his system noted key details that confirmed his thought.

It was the Leviathan from Terris.

“The story you want to know.”  The voice of the Present Mind had said.  The story of the monster that had destroyed a star system.

“No!  No!  No!” Fromm screamed, pounding his fists onto the wall-screen.  He was doing it with reckless abandon, the bones in his hands crunching, and Brooks stumbled over, trying to grab his flailing limbs.

“Help me!” he called to Nadian.

He could barely control one of the man’s arms, but as he did the man thrashed his whole torso and neck forward, smashing his head into the wall instead.

“I see it every night!  I can’t get it out!” he screamed, his voice bloodily hoarse.

As was the wall; Brooks tried to leverage him away from it, but even as he pulled him to the floor, the man began to bash his head back onto it, leaving bloody splatters.

Nadian took his other arm, and they tried to pull the man away from that, but there was almost no place to take him.  He struggled with inhuman ferocity, continuing to hit himself until Brooks could hear his skull crack and break, each subsequent impact causing more damage.  His words became garbled nonsense, and he flailed his limbs so hard that they could not even keep ahold of him.

Breaking free, he staggered, running towards the back of the ship.

Kell was there, and caught him.

“Rest,” Kell said softly.

The man sagged in his grip.

Brooks and Nadian both rushed over.

Putting his fingers to the man’s neck, Brooks felt no pulse.  Nothing at all.

He looked to Kell, whose face looked only slightly withdrawn.  “He will dream of it no more.”

“He was there,” Nadian breathed.  “He was from Terris, wasn’t he?  Originally.”

Kell nodded.

“Something’s happening to the star!” Kat called.  “I think it’s going to go nova!”

They turned back, seeing that the star was swelling rapidly.  The Leviathan was still there, and was swallowed up.  Brooks wished that would have been the end of it, but he knew it would not.

The outer layer was growing, reaching towards them.

“Someone get us the hell out of here!” Nadian called.

“Too late!” Kat screamed.

The star had swollen so large it could have encompassed the whole of the Sol system.  And then it tore itself apart.

Brooks could not help but to throw himself back, as pitiful a gesture as it was.

He could not imagine the energy and heat that must have been washing over and around them.

In the bizarre, sped-up way of everything they had seen, though, the explosion faded.  Through a milky fog they could see the stellar remnant left behind;

A black hole, one large enough to be the heart of an entire galaxy.

Perhaps their galaxy, Brooks thought in awe.

“Where’s the Leviathan?” Kat asked.

“Gone,” Brooks said, his voice a croak.  “Gone somewhere else.”

---

< Ep 13 part 29 | Ep 13 part 31 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

Father Cathal Sair held the dagger in his hand.  It was made of a dark metal or perhaps even stone that seemed to eat the light that touched it; only at very certain angles did it glint, giving a view of itself as something more than a solid shadow.

“The infinite callous cold calls to us all,” he spoke softly, reverently.

Yet all present heard his words, hung on them.

Even Pirra, it seemed to Apollonia.

The Dessei’s eyes, already much larger than a human’s, were open to their widest, fixed on the man.

“In its frozen, unfeeling, endless depths the Dark sees Our worth . . . sees that we are wanting, lacking true form and purpose.  It gives us a finality that befits our stature,” Sair said.

His eyes lowered from the knife, beads of sweat on his skin sparkling in the lights of the glowing spheres.  His eyes moved across them all.

Apollonia felt them linger on her, felt a . . . a longing, in them.  For her.

It pulled at her, and she leaned forward in her seat.  So did others, and for a moment she felt a flicker of jealousy; she was the special one here.  She was always the special one, it’s why people loved her.  Why they tolerated her.  Why they hated her.

“Yet there is a deeper mercy for us.  While we are nothing in the sight of the Dark, to the Elder Ones, the true rulers of the universe, we are the Pale Reflection.”

Slowly, he lowered his hand, his eyes moving again to Apollonia.

She felt her heart race.  The crowd turned, all together in a disturbing act of synchronicity, to look at her.  They waited.

Cathal’s fingers curled slowly, beckoning her.

Apollonia did not realize she rose, but she found herself halfway down the aisle.  Then she found herself on the stage.

“Lay yourself down to rest,” Cathal said to her softly.  There was love in his voice, she realized.

He did not have to say the words.

Neither did she.

She was laying on her back then, looking up at him.  Sadness rent his face, and she smiled.  “Why are you sad?” she asked.

“It will be over soon, Apollonia,” he said, so softly.

She felt something hit her cheek, reached up a hand.  It was wet.  With a tear?

“In the ancient times, the Great Ones were all.  All was of their flesh and their will.”

Four men appeared; they were of average appearance, their faces calm.  All wore very simple, light-blue robes, and two held large metal censers, suspended by brass chains from highly decorated poles.

The censers looked, like the altar, to be ancient.  Pirra’s unease grew, but she found she could barely even contemplate moving.

It was like when she was half-asleep and aware of it; a part of her could feel the desire to slip deeper, to fall back into slumber.  But she fought it, almost rocking back and forth, her heart fluttering faster as she tried to force her body and mind to move.

Smoke began to pour from the censers.  It smelled strangely, almost making her want to cough.

But it was soothing, too.

She felt herself going slack.  Her mind, drifting into that dream state where she was still aware – but that was all.  Unable to act.

“In the darkness the Great Ones first gave birth to light and created, from the shapeless, forms for life to inhabit,” Sair said.  He was looking at Apollonia, his words seemingly for her alone.

Next to her, two of the men drew back the sheets on the other altars.  These, too, were of ancient, crumbling stone, but indented, like rectangular bowls.

The men crawled inside, crossing their arms.

“Our forms are sacred to this day,” Sair breathed, stepping over to stand above one of the men.  “In the night of the universe they will remain sacred.”

The wickedly black knife in his hand thrust down, into the throat of the man.  He coughed, once, blood splattering his lips.  But otherwise he remained still.  His blood seeping from his body slowly.

“And to the darkness we shall return,” Sair said.

He moved and slashed again, cutting the other man’s throat.

“Insignificant yet mighty.  Tiny, and yet beloved.”

Pirra felt the horror of seeing these men die; she did not know who they were, but Father Sair had just murdered them.

Yet no matter how much she knew she should spring up, seek help – she could not make herself move.

The blood pooling around the two men began to crawl up the sides of the bowls.  It bridged the gap between the altars, squirming and flowing through the air, moving towards Apollonia.

She was still, staring up at Sair.  A look of . . . confusion, or possibly doubt, appeared on her face, but only for a moment.

Father Sair reached down, stroking a bloody hand across her cheek.  He said something, quietly, but the words were not audible.

Apollonia suddenly spasmed, her eyes rolling back into her head, her entire body convulsing.  Something formless, invisible, held her wrists and ankles to the altar, and she did not fall, but only continued to writhe, gasping for air.

Wanting to scream, but unable.

---

< Ep 13 part 28 | Ep 13 part 30 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

“On my signal, hit the button.  And remember!  You have to mean it,” Fergus called.

His signal was weak, the radio in his suit just barely able to reach through even the one airlock door.

Nadian was ready on the button.  “I still think this is too dangerous, Fergus.”

“We always put our lives on the line, Nadian,” the man replied.  “This time, I’m going first and you’ll get second-fiddle.”

Brooks stepped up to him.  “You really don’t have anything to prove, Fergus,” he said quietly.  “Your place in history is assured from what you’ve done already.”

Pride, just stupid pride, Brooks thought.

The man leaned closer.  “I have an inside advantage,” he said quietly, pointing up.  Brooks did not understand for a moment; then he realized that the man must have had his own contact with the Present Mind.

Brooks did not get a chance to pursue asking the man about it.  Fergus saluted jauntily, then turned to face the outside.

He had attached a high-strength graphene cable onto the airlock wall, and he tested it now.  It had been attached onto the stone with molecular hooks.  It couldn’t grip in as well as might be liked, but it was still more than strong enough to hold Fergus.

“I’m ready,” Fergus said.  “Open it up!”

Nadian hesitated.  Brooks watched the man.

“You don’t have to help him do this,” Brooks said.

“I wish I had thought of it first,” Nadian said, and hit the button.

The airlock door disappeared, and there was another rumble as the air went out.  

Fergus was taken out as well, slowly feeding out line.  His data came down the cable.

“Can you receive me?”

“Yes, we can hear you,” Brooks replied.  His signal was weak, but hopefully with the cable they’d be able to keep hearing him.

The man spooled out several meters.

“It appears that this is a ship that is moving,” he called.  “I can’t see the temple anymore.  Och, we’ve traveled far . . .”

“Can you see anything else?” Nadian asked.

“There’s a superstructure of the ship, it’s entirely blocking my view forward.  But I see gas clouds.  I think . . .”  He faded a few moments.  “I think I see the star.  Stars!  It is out there.”

“Get back in here!” Brooks called.  “The radiation will fry you!”

“My sensors aren’t detecting a damn thing, Captain.”

“They can be overwhelmed.”

“If that’s the case I’m dead already,” Fergus said.  “I’m not feeling any pull, getting any rads.”

“You are drifting towards the fore of the ship,” Nadian said.

“My initial thrust was probably unbalanced,” Fergus said.  “Not an issue.”

Fergus was drifting off to the left, slowly heading out of sight of the airlock window as he went further.

“To be honest, lads and lass, I think that . . . yes, I’m certain – we’ve been bamboozled.”

“What do you mean?” Nadian asked.

“I think we’re in a craft, aye.  But the craft is inside a bubble, projecting what it wants us to see!  Carnival ride, like I said.”

Brooks got on the line.  “I am highly skeptical of that, Fergus.  You felt what we all did when we passed through the Lens.”

“Do you have a better explanation?”

Brooks did not.  He looked to Kell.  “Is this real, Ambassador?”

Kell said nothing.

“Ambassador, I need you to-“

Fergus’s voice cut through.  “Going out farther, but don’t worry, I’ll let you all hold my awards when we get back!”

“Fergus, I suggest you come back now,” Brooks said.

“Nay, Captain!  I dinnae think you of all people would be this cowardly!”

He could see Fergus getting smaller.  The spool of cable went up to 300 meters, but Fergus hopefully wouldn’t go that far . . .

Brooks got a ping; he was receiving other data from the cable, and it was registering an unexpectedly increasing pull.

“Fergus, are you feeling anything?”

“Only the sense that I’m going to find this outer wall soon.”  The man’s voice was breaking up more – interference from stellar wind hitting the cable, Brooks thought.

The sensor was showing that the pulling force was increasing.

“Fergus, are you feeling any pull?” Brooks asked.

“Pull?  Well I’m moving, so . . .”

“Stop for just a moment.  The cable has strange readings.”

“I swear, Captain, I-“

“Just stop for one fucking moment,” Brooks snapped.

The man started to slow.  But he did not come to a stop.

“Just stop, man,” Brooks messaged.

“I . . . I’m trying to, Captain.  I stopped the line, but it’s . . .” he broke up a second.  “-avity is pulling me!”

The line was still pulling out several centimeters a second, the motor for pulling it was not strong enough to bring it to a halt.

“Can you reel yourself back in if I put in the emergency stop?”

“I dinna know!”

“Try climbing back!”

“The pull is getting stronger!”

They couldn’t see Fergus anymore, he was well past the edge of their vision, but Brooks could see the cable being pulled hard against the edge of the outer airlock door.

The cable would take far more pressure to break.  But if the man could not return, it was hardly any better.

“. . . trying . . . myself back . . .”

“Why is the signal degrading so quickly?” Kat asked.  She moved over towards the windows and pointed.  “There!”

Brooks rushed over, and saw that the man had been pulled straight out in front of the ship now, visible through the touch-created windows they had made earlier.  The cable seemed to stretch strangely, as if it was going around something that was there but invisible to them.

He was holding onto the cable, trying to pull himself back, but it was pulling out as fast as he could climb.

“I’m hitting the emergency brake,” Brooks said.

The line jolted, and Fergus’s hands slipped free, only still connected by the hook – at the back.

“He can’t reach it!” Kat cried.

Nadian rushed over and started digging into his bag.  “I’m going out for him!”

“We don’t have another cable,” Brooks said.  “You can’t hold onto that line if he can’t.  And at least he’s connected.”

“Then I’ll go into the airlock and start pulling it in myself!”

Brooks looked to Kell.

“Can you pull him in?”

Kell looked up at him this time.  “Possibly.”

“Try,” Brooks said sharply.

Kell watched him a moment, then went towards the airlock.  He looked through the glass.

“Kell,” Brooks said softly.  “Can you pass through this?  I’ve seen you move in ways that let you just . . . ignore walls and impediments . . .”

Kell looked slightly amused.  “Observant.  But no.  In this place, the structure is built in all places I can reach.  I cannot circumvent it.”

“. . . straining . . . suit . . .” the words came in.

“We only have one more space suit,” Kat said softly.  “If we open this door, we’ll lose the air in here.”

“Damn it!” Brooks yelled, pounding his fist into the wall.

“It is already too late,” Kell said.  He nodded out the airlock window.

Brooks looked as well.

The base of the cable was rocking on the wall.  Its molecular hooks had failed in most places.

“Fergus!” Brooks called out.  “Do whatever you have to to get back!  The cable is-“

It ripped free from the wall and flew out of the airlock.

Brooks felt his jaw drop, and he looked out towards where Fergus was visible outside the ‘front’ window.

The man was receding rapidly, his arms flailing.

And he was starting to glow.

Heat, Brooks realized.  The star before them was larger than before, filling their view.  And Fergus was falling into its light and heat.

“He was right,” Kell said quietly.  “There was a bubble around us, one that protected this vessel.  He has left it.”

Fergus’s spacesuit burst into flames, burning away completely.  Inside, he was already a torch, and his flesh burned, leaving only a gaunt skeleton that likewise was incinerated in moments.

Kat covered her mouth in horror, and Brooks leaned against the wall heavily.

The man had been obnoxious, but his death was senseless.  If only he hadn’t been so foolish.

And if Kell had helped.  He looked up at the being, who was watching him coldly.

“Yes, I let him die,” Kell said.

“You could have told us if you knew!”

“You would have questioned it.  Doubted it.  Wanted to test it.  That fool would only have been emboldened in this desire to go out.”

“He did not have to die, though!”

Kell smiled, slightly.  “Yet now you understand the seriousness of the situation.  This room, all of your speculations have been correct.  It is a vessel, it is an experience to educate.  But at no point is it under an obligation to keep you alive.”

---

< Ep 13 part 27 | Ep 13 part 29 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

“What in God’s name is that?”

Brooks had been looking under the consoles, seeing if he could find a hatch to view the inside workings – without success.

When he heard Fergus’s question, he came out.

At first he did not see it.  The field of stars outside of their view all looked the same.

But then he saw the faint ripple.

“It looks like the surface of a pond,” Nadian said.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Kat added, leaning in close to the screen.  “Is it just a distortion on the cameras?  I don’t know how empty space could be having that effect.

“It is real,” Kell said, from across the room.  He leaned calmly against the wall, staring out unblinkingly.

Brooks also peered out, trying to gauge the size of the ripples.

It was growing larger.

“We’re moving towards it,” he said.  “We’re going to hit it.”

“Ambassador, what the hell is it?” Nadian asked, turning to look at the being.

“It is a veil,” Kell said.  “To you, perhaps a lens.”

“Will it kill us though, that’s the question,” Fergus said.  He also turned towards Kell.  “Now would be a really nice time for yeh to share what yeh know, Ambassador!”

Kell ignored him.

Brooks came closer to him.  “What will happen to this ship – to us – when we go through it?”

“It will be unpleasant,” Kell told him.

“Will we survive?”

“In what sense?”

Fergus let out a curse, and Brooks almost echoed the sentiment.  Now was not the time for cryptic nonsense-

“You had best step back, Captain,” Kell said.

A shiver went down Brooks’s spine.  Was Kell turning hostile?

He stepped back carefully.

“We’re about to hit it,” Kat said.

“We will pass through,” Kell said.  “Mind your mind.”

The distortion was more extreme closer up, the stars behind it turning to strange lines that moved erratically.

It swept over them.  Whatever Brooks had expected to feel, it was not what he felt.

The floor, the entire room, seemed to fall away, to shrink and disappear into nothingness.  He felt his sense of self grow in directions he could not name or understand, encompassing more space than was possible.

But something was there, engulfing him – constraining him.  He felt it in all possible directions he could feel – visions in his eyes that he could not possibly understand, flashes of lights and movement and shape that made no sense, that his mind could not make sense of.

But all encompassed in that strange presence that horrified him.  It congealed slowly into something that almost made sense.

He saw bulging eyes, screaming mouths lined with thousands of needle-sharp teeth, flesh that seethed and glistened, slick with corruption and its own barely-restrained hate.

And then he felt the presence.

“Kell?” he whispered.

The eyes, which had henceforth been peering in all directions, moved to look at him.  He felt the attention as a physical, stifling presence.

The complexity of the structure of flesh that surrounded him staggered him, a single being – yet so vastly complex and faceted that he could not map it, not even take it all in.  Yet there was something unmistakably familiar that he could see was the being he knew as Kell; some aspect of this madness of flesh and eyes and impossible layerings, distilled down into a familiar shape.

“How could you ever grasp it?” a thousand voices whispered, all of them speaking as one.

He suddenly collapsed back in on himself, finding that he was standing just where he had been.

His feet felt planted so strongly that he could not move, and it took him several moments to reassert control over his body and relax slightly.

Staggering against the wall, he looked for the others, noting absently that the entire shape of the room had changed.  Nadian, Kat, and Fergus were all still standing where they had been, and all seemed to be running through the same feelings he had just experienced.

But had they seen Kell for what he was?  Did they understand what it meant?  And that he was the reason they had even survived passing through the lens?

Because Brooks could understand now, that without something to constrain them, their minds would have spread until they became a diffuse nothingness that could never reassert itself . . .

A scream tore his thoughts, causing him to stagger.

Tobias Fromm thrashed, falling, his hands clutching his head.

“Stay out of my mind!” he screamed, his legs kicking desperately, like a man trying to evade a predator.

Away from Kell.

Kell looked at the man, regarding him like a worm.  “Pathetic,” he said.

“Kell,” Brooks said, finding that he was short on breath.  “What are you doing?”

“I looked in him,” Kell said calmly.  “He is no Apollonia.”

Nadian staggered towards Kell.  “What did you do to him?”

“He is unhurt.  He simply did not enjoy my looking,” Kell said, with a shrug.

“Fromm, you all right?” Nadian asked, trying to take the man’s arm.  Fromm shook him off.

“No, I’m not fine!” the man yelled.  “You brought me here, Nadian!  You brought me to this hell hole!”

“Quiet,” Brooks said.  “There’s something new outside.”

His voice was calm, but gathered all attention.  All eyes followed his to look out the windows.

“What is that?” Fergus asked.

“It looks like a collapsing ball of gas,” Kat said.

Which, Brooks thought, was probably right.

There was a huge cloud of gas; they were in the more diffuse edge, and though it obscured their vision somewhat, they could not miss what lay in the center.

The gas was rotating, faster and faster, falling together under the power of gravity.  Collecting – and heating up.

“There was no nebula near us,” Nadian breathed.  “Where are we?”

There was no answer forthcoming for him, and they could only continue to stare as the gas collapsed inwards, heating up until it glowed.

Time seemed impossible to keep track of, even Brooks’s system was no help, having stopped working.  It was as if eons of time were flashing before their eyes.

The pressure grew greater, greater, until jets of gas blasted from the poles of the dawning star.  So much energy unleashed that even the mundane matter was accelerated until it was just streaks of energy.

More gas than seemed possible condensed into the star, until – with a flash that was nearly blinding – the critical threshold was hit and fusion began.

A star was born.

It was dwarfed by the cloud around it, despite its size that would have to be huge, he thought.  A massive body, hundreds of times the mass of the sun.

A shockwave radiated from it, the first massive burst of cosmic wind, rippling through the gas.  The whole room shuddered as it passed.

The remaining gas, Brooks knew, should be blown away by that explosive birth.  But while it was pushed back, it soon stopped and then continued to fall into the star.

It grew larger and larger, feeding on ever more dust.  It was only a sphere, but Brooks could tell in some way that this was no ordinary star, it was now swollen far beyond any star that existed.  It began to dwarf even the cloud that birthed it, but more continued to fall inwards towards it, until it was larger than any star that could even exist in the universe as it was.

As it was . . .  but not as it had been.

“A primordial dark star is birthed,” Kell said, his voice a toneless chant.  “A gateway to a higher reality.”

Fergus moved forward, reaching out to touch the screen.

“This can’t be real,” he said.  “There was no nebula near us, like Nade said.  No star would collapse this quickly and form.  This is . . . this is a simulation.  Some kind of bloody amusement park ride!”

He punched the wall, his knuckles bloody.  “I dinnae believe any of this!”

“The whole room is different,” Nadian said, looking around.

Whereas before it had been taller than wide, now it was different; the ceiling was low, close to their heads.  But the room was wider.

And there was a new, open door.

Fergus staggered towards it and peered through.

Brooks came closer to look in as well, but it was only the size of a large closet.

Or an airlock, he realized.  On the other side was another door.

Fergus looked at him, grinning.  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Brooks replied.

“What?” Kat demanded, coming over as well.  “Oh Christ, Fergus, you want to go out there?”

“I don’t even believe there is an ‘out there’,” Fergus said.  “I think this is all some kind of illusion.  For all we know this bloody temple is a theme park and we just turned on one of the rides.”

“You don’t really believe that,” Nadian said.

“No,” Fergus admitted.  “But I don’t believe this is real, either.  It may be some kind of simulation.”

“So why is there an airlock then?” Kat asked.

“Because we may be in space, but it’s only projecting the rest,” Fergus replied, gesturing.  “I’m not totally daft.  We’ll test my idea first.  Do we have any sensors?”

Brooks cursed as he realized that he’d left his bags out in the hall before he’d come into this room.  At the time it had seemed wise in case he needed to move quickly without its weight and bulk.  But all of his gear was in it.

“I’ve got a camera, but it won’t go through this stone,” Nadian said with a shrug.

Mumbling to himself in annoyance, Fergus dug into his bag and pulled out a small figurine.

It looked suspiciously like himself, but with an enlarged head on a spring.  He gave it a playful poke, grinning at the others.

“I’ll be the first out there,” he said in amusement, putting the bobblehead down in the airlock.

Stepping back, he looked for controls.  “Kell, me chap, could you help me with this?”

Kell did not even look over.

“Brooks, can you get him to help?”

“I won’t,” Brooks said.  “I am against this idea of yours, Fergus.  Even just testing it.  We don’t know what any of this does.”

“All the more reason for his help!  He understands it.”

Which did seem true, but looking at Kell, Brooks had the unnerving thought that Kell simply saw more, but did not really know anything more about this technology than they did.

He went over.

“What do you think of his plan?” Brooks asked Kell quietly.

“I think if he kills himself, my mood will be improved,” Kell replied.

“You really hate him,” Brooks said in surprise.

“He meddles in things he does not comprehend, and has no understanding of caution.  He thinks these are merely puzzles to be solved for his entertainment.  But I know it is far more than that.”

“How?” Brooks asked.  “You knew that that was a . . . a dark star, you called it?  One formed from dark matter?”

Kell looked to him with utmost solemness.  “Such knowledge is encoded in my very being.”

Fergus called out.  “I think I’ve got it!” he said.

Brooks looked over and saw that Fergus had gotten the airlock door closed.  In the middle was a floor-to-ceiling window view into the room.

“This one will open it,” he said.  “It’s a mighty clever gadget, to be sure.  Ya see, it doesn’t react to touch, but to intent when you touch.  I bet I could get this to give us some strawberry ice cream once I prove myself right!”

Brooks came over.  The man could end up venting them all.  “Are you certain?”  He was looking to Nadian.

Nadian hesitated, and Fergus saw that Brooks was appealing to his hated competitor, and spat at the floor.

“I figure out their machines, and this is how you treat me?” he raged.  “I’ll show you ungrateful cunts.”

He smashed his hand down onto the controls.

Through the thin window, Brooks saw the far door open – simply disappearing, not even moving – and there was a slight thump that he could feel.

The bobblehead flew out on the blast of escaping air.

“Hah!” Fergus said.  “As I called it, ye doubting ninnies.  It’s an airlock!”

He stepped away, while Brooks continued to peer out.  In the darkness beyond the airlock, he could see stars.  They were still, so that meant the ship was not spinning, at least.

He heard sounds behind himself, and looked back.

Fergus had his bag, and was pulling out a roll of something large.

“What is that?” Brooks asked.

“My spacesuit,” Fergus said, still grinning.

“You can’t really be thinking of going out there!” Kat said.

“Oh, but I am,” Fergus said.  “And I’ll be the first!”

---

< Ep 13 part 26 | Ep 13 part 28 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

Pirra whistled to herself as she went out the door.

Alexander would be excited to see her, she thought.  She had not told him that she had decided to come, she wanted to surprise him.  Besides, he was probably already there without his system!

She had left hers in her office.  It was always strange to be without her system and HUD.  It was normal protocol that everyone on a starship go without them on occasion – you did not want to become so used to them that you became helpless – but it still felt odd.

It did keep things in perspective, though, since you had to just really look at the world around you.

She adjusted her wing drapes as she went.  Alexander always dressed up when he went to these events, so she had done the same.

Dessei standards of dressing up were quite different from human ones, though.  Humans often became more drab, opting for only a few colors.  But for her people, you wanted to be a goddamn rainbow.

She had toned it down; limiting herself to black and white, with yellow trim.  It matched her green plumage and red eyes well, she thought.

As she whistled her way down the hall, she saw a flash of red.

She froze a moment, realizing before she was even consciously aware of it that it was Kessissiin.

On paper she ought to feel positive about him.  He was one of the best in her unit, after all.  He distinguished himself in every encounter, and he admired her greatly.

But she could not get past his hero-worship – or his species chauvinism.

“Hello, Commander,” he said, with just the right level of pleasantness and professionalism.  She had him on watch when she was not.  It had been the suggestion of her planning algorithms, and they were great – and official – tools.  Kessissiin did not like it, and had requested to be changed to another shift.  She had been happy to implement the schedule and denied his request.

Hopefully, she thought, the system had not made the suggestion solely because of her emotional reaction to him.

“Hello,” she said, adjusting her path to just go by him.

“May I speak with you a moment?” he asked.

He did not move into her path, which would have made her immediately turn him down.  So she stopped.

“Yes?” she asked.

“I simply would like to wish you a pleasant evening,” he said, his crest flashing in a motion to represent simple happiness; a smile.

“Ah, well thank you.  To you, too,” she said, offering the same politeness, and turning to move on.

“Where are you off to for the evening?” he asked.

She felt a thrill of annoyance that showed in her crest, and from the shift of his eyes, she knew he saw that.

He did not politely back off or feign remembering that he had to leave, something to let her off for answering, though.  He only seemed . . .  Well, he was staying hard to read, but she thought he might be slightly nervous.

But why, if he was nervous, was he holding her up further?

“I’m going to a religious event with my husband,” she said.  She wouldn’t lie about it or couch it, even if it wasn’t any of his business.  She had nothing to hide.

He reacted with shock.  “You’re going to a human religious ceremony?”

Her annoyance grew.  “Yes.  So?  I’m going because Alex believes in it.  I know you’re not married, Kessissiin, but this is a healthy thing that partners do for each other.”

“But you don’t believe in it?” he asked.

She scowled in response.  She had implied that, hadn’t she?

“When was the last time you – or your supportive husband – went to a Dessei cultural event?” he challenged, his crest raising.

“I am not playing into this,” she replied sharply.  “And this is the second time you are out of line recently!”

Kessissiin did not seem in the slightest troubled by that.  “I know that you love your husband, Erreseh-“

“What did you just call me?” she demanded, eyes widening and crest rising.  Erreseh was an intimate term, something that only someone who was the closest of family, a lover, or someone with whom you shared an eternal bond of comradeship should be called.  Not him to her!

“-but he is not the only one who loves you!”

He leaned closer, his hands onto her arms.  He hovered there, unsure, as she stared at him in shock.

With a bonk, something hit him on the head.

“What?” he yelped, staggering into her slightly.  She pushed him aside, the assailant behind him still unknown to her.

As he fell to the side, she realized that it was not an assailant – or, at least not one aimed at her.

Apollonia was raising the plastic tube again, her eyes tracking Kessissiin and preparing to launch another blow as he staggered to the side.

Pirra reached out, grabbing the pipe before she could do that.

“Apollonia, stop it,” she ordered sharply.

The human woman looked to her, surprise widening her eyes.  “Wasn’t he attacking you?!” she said, trying to wrench the pipe free from Pirra’s grasp.

“No!” Pirra said.  “I mean, he was . . . taking liberties!”

“Let me hit him again then,” Apollonia said, as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world.

Kessissiin let out a groan, rubbing his head.  “This is the human that just attacked me?” he said, gesturing to Apollonia, but staring at Pirra.

“If you had been doing your duty instead of . . .”  Pirra struggled to find the appropriate words.  “. . . . all that, you might have heard her coming!  And she only thought she was protecting me from your loutish behavior!”

“Loutish?” Kessissiin said, his tone sounding hurt.

“You were being a fucking creep,” Apollonia said.  “Damn weirdo sex perv-“

Kessissiin rose in one swift motion, making a sound that could be mistaken as nothing but aggression.

Pirra moved in between Apollonia and the man.

They were of equal height and weight.  Dessei males and females did not have much dimorphism, so they’d be similar strengths, and they both had high-end military enhancements.  If he did want to get to Apollonia, who lacked anything like that and was quite a bit smaller than him, he’d have to go through Pirra.

He stopped, though, clearly unwilling to fight her.  “She attacked me!”

“She has no augments, and your skull is reinforced,” Pirra said.  “Go see a medical drone but I’d bet anything you’re fine.”

Kessissiin’s crest moved in ugly ways.  “You always side with them over your own people.”

“You are acting out of line,” she said coldly.  “And you are out of my unit.  For this, and for what you did just before that.  Go turn in your weapons and your badge.  You are benched until further notice.”

Kessissiin let out a slow whistle of shock.  He was, she saw, truly stunned by this, and could not even reply for a few long moments.

“I understand,” he finally said, standing up stiffly.  “Commander.”

“Go,” Pirra said.

He turned, marching like a machine, down the hall.

Pirra could not put in the order now, without her system.  She wasn’t even sure of the time, which twisted her gut in worry.  What if she was late and got locked out of Alex’s event?

“Are you all right?” she asked Apollonia quickly.

“Yeah,” the woman said.  “Did I . . . make that worse?  I thought you might be in trouble.”

Pirra considered how to reply.  “I appreciate that you wanted to help, but you should have just called for assistance.”

“I don’t have my system,” Apollonia mumbled.  “He just looked like he was all over you like a . . .” she trailed off, evidently not able to think of an appropriate comparison.

“I am able to take care of myself,” Pirra said, trying not to take offense.  “Dessei don’t have sexual dimorphism like humans.”

“So you’re saying you could have taken him?”  Apollonia asked.

“Er . . .”

“In a fight, I mean!”

“Well . . . yes,” Pirra said, her pride rising.

“Then why didn’t you?” Apollonia asked.  Pirra had a good feeling that it was a sincere question.

“Dessei are very forward in these things, so he wasn’t . . . well, no, he absolutely was acting inappropriately,” Pirra admitted, finding the nuances of her people’s ways rather hard to explain to an outsider.  Such sudden declarations were not strange, but he had gone about it all in the absolute worst way.

“But I did not want to resort to violence.”  Pirra added the last part pointedly, and Apollonia seemed to give off clear signs of regret and nervousness.  “Why didn’t you have your system on you, anyway?”

“Sorry, I was on my way to an event,” Apollonia replied.

“You too?” Pirra asked.

“You’re going?” Apollonia echoed.

They both nodded.

“Well . . . walk with me,” Pirra said.  “Kessissiin probably won’t try to make any charges.  But just . . . don’t hit people with things, Ms. Nor.”

“Not even if they need help?” Apollonia asked with a frown.

Pirra was not sure if Apollonia meant that Kessissiin needed help via bonking, or if it was to help someone potentially being attacked.  “. . . Just try to have better discretion,” Pirra finally said with a sigh.  “At discerning who actually is in trouble.”  She eyed Apollonia.  “What were you doing here?  This isn’t the way to the event.”

“I was taking a walk first,” Apollonia muttered.

She looked very concerned.  Pirra was not sure if she really should be telling the woman she had done right.

But on a personal level she, well, she appreciated the thought.

She put a hand on Apollonia’s shoulder.  “Well . . . thanks,” she said.

Apollonia perked up and smiled at her.

---

< Ep 13 part 24 | Ep 13 part 26 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

“Elliot, stop messing with your tie,” Iago chided his son.

“It’s too tight,” Elliot complained.  “It’s choking me.”

“There’s a difference between choking and just feeling it there,” Iago replied.

Elliot let it drop, both literally and figuratively, the tie flopping back down.

Iago had let his son pick the design for the tie, so it was of course a wholly-inappropriate monster with gaping jaws, strange curved fangs, and a necklace of skulls.  It wielded a giant club, and you could just barely see the hands and curved sword of the ancient warrior who was ready to battle it.

“I think it’s cute,” Cass had said when she’d seen it.

Which was, Iago thought, perhaps the most deflating comment she could have made.  “It reminds me of humanity’s insignificance in the face of the horrors of the universe.”

That last bit, at least, Elliot had liked.

They were on their way to the Ceremony.  Father Sair had not said that they should dress up, but Iago had decided they should; it felt appropriate to do so.

Cassandra took his arm, smiling up at him, and he felt such warmth and happiness at this moment that it stole his words.

He would never be thankful for thinking he had lost her.  But that absence of her from his life had taught him just how deep his feelings for her had run.  Every moment was a treasure.

How many people got their wish to have more time with the person they had loved and lost?

They had left early.  He found he often tended to be late unless he planned this way, and with the way Cassandra fussed over her clothes and how Elliot tended to be, made it just seem wise.

So now they were walking, as a family, for a time.  He’d planned a roundabout path through some of the Craton‘s gardens and the Equator Ring.  It seemed just to be a good time.  Even better if they could gaze upon the infinity of space before worship.

Elliot hadn’t been very excited about it, but he now took to running around the garden, hopping over every crack on the decorative cobbles, and climbing up on benches.

“He’s wearing himself out,” Cassandra said, sighing.

“That was my plan,” Iago admitted, winking to her.

“Oh, you are bad!”

“Well, I remember being his age.  I was a menace.  It might help him stay awake.”

Cass frowned a little, seeming bothered.

“What is it?” he asked.

She said nothing for a long time, and they kept walking.

“I just wonder,” she said.  “I . . . I was gone for so long.  I missed so much.”

“I know, but now you’re with us, and you’ll be here for everything,” he promised her.  “We could leave the Craton if it worries you.”

“It’s not that I’m worried about the future . . .  I feel safe with you,” she said to him, putting a hand on his chest.  “Sometimes, though, I . . .”

Cassandra had often hidden her thoughts from him, he knew.  Not always; just since her return.  She had said little, kept some things hidden away.

He had wanted to give her time – and he had a feeling now that she might be about to say something of importance.

He waited now, just wanting to listen.  She finally spoke.

“I sometimes feel like I’m an imposter.  Not the real Cassandra you met and married.  My memories – sometimes I worry they’re someone else’s, not mine.  Like I’m not real . . .”

“You’re real!” he said, taking her hands.  “You are my wife, Elliot’s mother.  You are the wonderful, beautiful, genius woman who makes this universe a better place with her presence.”

He could see her smile, saw that his words were having the effect he wanted.

He leaned in, kissed her on the cheek.  “And no one else knows where you have that one mole, do they?” he added with an evil grin.

“Iago!” she said, blushing some, but also laughing.

“Dad!”  Elliot yelled from down the path.  He did not sound in trouble, but definitely wanted their attention.

Iago sighed.  “Let’s go see what trouble our son has found, shall we?”

She smiled and they went together.

Elliot was standing on the last cobble, balancing on one foot.  He waited for them to get close, then pointed.

The cobbles of the garden paths stopped here, turning to more traditional decking, and out beyond was a small courtyard with little stands of snacks and street food.  Among the benches, though, sat a man alone.

“It’s Mr. Tred,” Elliot said.

“Yes,” Iago agreed.  “What about him?”

The neurotic man was always sitting alone, so he didn’t see his son’s issue.  Even stranger that he cared; Tred had always been annoyed by Elliot’s antics.  They knew him . . . not well, but well enough, since the man lived unfortunately close to Alexander and Pirra.

“Yeah, but he looks really down,” Elliot said.  “See?  I think he’s even been crying.”

Iago blinked, surprised to see that it was true.  Tred’s face and eyes were puffy, and he looked . . . well, more miserable than usual.

“Why don’t we ask him to come with us?” Elliot said.  “You and mom always say you feel better after church.”

The frankness of his son’s comment shocked him.  They did say that, and they did feel that.  But he had not really thought his son would take it in this way, might even suggest others could benefit from it.

He felt a sudden swell of pride in his chest.  Cass smiled at him.  “I think that’s a very good idea.  Do you want to go ask him, Elliot?”

“Well, he doesn’t like me much,” Elliot admitted.  “But you were a really important Response Officer, dad.  He’s got to know you and trust you.  Why don’t you ask him?”

Iago considered.  It was a pretty reasonable point.

“All right,” he said, smiling.

He walked over, and overheard Elliot speak to his mom softly.

“Do you think they won’t be able to fit me in if Mr. Tred goes?  Maybe I should go home.”

Cassandra’s voice was warm, but firm.  “Not a chance, Elliot.”

Iago grinned.  It had been a nice try on his son’s part.

He kept walking towards Tred.  The man noticed him when he was only a few meters away, looking up with puffy eyes.

“I’m sorry,” the man said.  “I didn’t mean to cause any trouble, I’ll go-“

“Go?” Iago asked, smiling.  “You’re not in trouble, Tred.  I’m not even in Response anymore.”

The man hesitated, sniffed once, then started to get up again.  “I just don’t want to cause any trouble.”

“No, look,” Iago said, putting a hand on Tred’s shoulder.  The man paused in an awkward half-stand.  “I just . . . well, no, my son saw that you looked down, Tred.”

The man hovered in his half-standing stance a moment longer, before standing up.  “Oh,” he said.  He didn’t say anything else.

“I just . . . we don’t want that for you,” Iago said earnestly.

Tred sniffed, wiping at his face.  It was dry, he just didn’t seem to want to look Iago in the eye.  “Thanks,” he said.

“Why don’t you come with us?” Iago said.  “We’re going to an event.  It’s a religious ceremony – and I know you’re not religious.  But that’s okay.  You don’t have to be to be there.  The more the merrier, you know?  And I think . . . well, I mean there’s a chance that, whatever is bothering you, you might feel better afterwards.”

Tred’s jaw dropped slightly, staring at Iago in surprise.  “You’re inviting me to your event?”

He wasn’t sure what to say to Iago.  He did not like events, or groups.  Or religion, for that matter.  Most times he thought of it with a vague sense of guilt and apprehension.

Did he have faith in some higher power?  He didn’t think so.  But strange things that could not be explained with science had been happening.  Who could explain a Leviathan?

No one yet, he thought.  It didn’t mean they wouldn’t be able to one day, though.  But was he really interested in filling the void inside himself with some kind of supernatural belief?

He could imagine himself falling into it, even too deep.  To the point where even the religious people rejected him.  His bitter fantasy hurt already.

But maybe not?  Maybe some faith would help . . .

Iago had waited patiently as he saw the visible struggle on Tred’s face, but cleared his throat now.  “If you do want to come Tred, it’s being held in Event Room C13, at 1900.  Get there by or before then, because the doors will be locked after that.”

Tred did not know.  Most meetings you could come in late.  People might be annoyed at that, but they would still want you there.

“If you do show up late, just knock,” Iago added as an afterthought.  “I’ll try to let you in.”

“Okay,” Tred said.

Iago did not know if the man really meant it, or if he would come.  But as he walked away, Tred called out.

“Thank you, Mr. Caraval.”

---

< Ep 13 part 23 | Ep 13 part 25 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

They could not control anything; the panels simply did not seem to allow them to do so, even doing the reverse of the action Kat had done in the vain hope it might return the vessel to the temple and open the door.

Kell warned them to cease meddling with the controls.

“You do not know what circumstances might unfold,” he said.

Which did get them to stop.

Being in here was not necessarily a terrible turn of events.  They had come for exploration, after all, and they had found something unique.  It would only be an issue if they could not find a way out.

They naturally broke up into groups.  Nadian and Kat were speaking quietly, the former’s animated face seeming to be comforting.  Kat, for her part, clearly felt guilty.

Fergus was talking quietly to Fromm, perhaps because both distrusted Nadian.

“Kell, what can you tell me about what’s going on here?” Brooks asked softly to the Ambassador.

“Very little,” Kell replied.

“I need you to do better than that,” Brooks replied.  “You’re capable of more.”

Kell looked at him with a little more seriousness.

“You overestimate my knowledge.  There are things I know from experience, which are limited to Earth.  There are things I know because they were imprinted into my being – these are sparse and general.  And there are things I can see that you cannot.  That is all it is – observations.  But I do not always have the knowledge to make sense of them.”

“You see more than me, and right now that’s what I need,” Brooks said, realizing that he needed to be more specific with Kell.  “What do you see that I may be missing?”

Kell looked slightly amused at that.  “Much.”

Brooks took a deep breath.

“There is a presence here,” he began.  “I . . . spoke to it, before I came to.”

Kell nodded.  “Yes.”

“You were aware of it?”

“Only once it made itself known,” Kell replied.  “Though to think it might not be here is foolish.  Would your people leave a station without its machines?”

Brooks’s mind raced.  “Is it hostile?”

“Treat it as such,” Kell replied.

“There’s some difficulty for me there,” Brooks said.  “I cannot lie to it.  The Present Mind knew what I was thinking when we communicated.  It spoke with my own inner voice into my mind.  It took the shape of people from my memories.”  He sighed.  “We have technologies for reading minds.  But this was different.”

“From higher dimensional angles, lower-dimensional objects are visible in all their details,” Kell said.

“As I can see all of a 2D picture in one look, yes,” Brooks replied, frowning.  “So it is able to look at my brain from these higher angles and . . . understand me?”

“It was made this way to enable its purpose; obeying its creators.  It is a tool – the computer which controls this place.”

“This ‘enabling’.”

Kell shrugged slightly.  “It ‘enabled’ them to do something.  What, I am not yet sure.  Yet your guesses as to why it is so large miss the true point; it is not this scale to simply show power – though I am certain it did do that – it is this scale because the technologies behind it required this scale.”

A terrifying thought, Brooks thought.  What purpose could require so vast a station – what did it ‘enable’?  But it was not something there was any value in pursueing at this moment, when answers were still elusive.

“Is the Present Mind listening to us now?” he asked.

“Yes,” Kell said.  “But when it is not directly interacting with us it will not know our minds.  It is a tool, after all – nothing more.  It will only know our minds when it establishes direct connection.”

“When I’m in the white nothingness,” Brooks said, nodding slightly.

Kell looked slightly amused.  “Is that how you see it?”

If it could read his mind fully – and it did seem to be able to see all of him – it would know of this conversation.  Perhaps it would have to check, but it likely would.  While it might feel unassailable, and perhaps truly was, it would also want to know of potential threats.

They had to be viewed as that, even if just because vermin could be a threat.

A sudden thought came to him.  “Kell, if it has read my mind so completely – can it mimic me?”

“It could,” Kell said.  “I could see through it, if it tried, however.”

Still, it sat uneasily with Brooks.

---

The paperwork before her seemed to have grown into a mountain, and Pirra wished she could just be doing what she was good at instead of all this nonsense.

They were just lists, projected above her desk, all of the actual work was digital sheets, of course.  But even just that projected wall seemed to blot out all behind it.

Wonderful, she thought.  She should never have agreed to the promotion that made her de facto head of Response.

Shouldn’t Kai Yong Fan be doing some of this?  She was the head of Response.  Of course, she knew that Kai was really doing quite a bit more.  It was just all much more in the form of supply and organization.

But much more than the sheer amount of work, it just felt absurd to Pirra that she was here doing paperwork while the Captain was inside an ancient, spooky, abandoned relic temple.  The doors had closed on it earlier, and she had put herself on standby.  Yet no order had come through activating her or her team.

Which galled her, though she did not exactly know why.  She wasn’t even eager to go into such a place.  It just reeked of horror.

She glanced again at her lists of paperwork, sorting them into a vague list of priority.

This wouldn’t have gotten so bad if she had just stayed on top of it.

She had half a mind to call for a surprise drill, to get out of this work.  But that kind of thing was how she had ended up in this mess in the first place.

A call came in.  She should ignore it, but it was her husband, Alexander.

Eagerly, she took the call.

“Hello~” she sang pleasantly.  “Pirra is not available right now, on account of her dying inside due to the amount of paperwork she has in front of her.”

Alexander let out a very human chuckle.  “Hey, honey, I was gonna see how you were doing, but I guess now I know.”

“I’m at least in the home office,” she said.  “It’s more relaxed.”

“Nothing like working in your pajamas,” Alex teased.

Something about that human word had always irked her.  She could not say it right; Alex thought it was cute, but she did not feel the same way.  He mentioned it every chance he got.

She didn’t really mind.

“I am fully dressed,” she insisted, though, keeping to their in-joke.  “You know I don’t wear pashamas.”

“I know, I know.  But hey, I wanted to tell you that I’m not gonna be home until late.”

“Oh,” she said, her crest falling.  She had thought they would have a nice, quiet evening at home together.  Until the inevitable call for her to go into action because of some nonsense with the stupid temple.

“I’m going to a special event that Father Sair is holding,” he continued.  He sounded somewhat nervous, hurrying his words.  “And I know it’s not your thing, but – would you want to go with me?”

She was surprised at that; she had assumed he would be late because of his work.

She did not know what to say.  She did believe in being supportive of her partners interests and hobbies.

Though perhaps a religion was more than a hobby?  She wasn’t entirely sure.

It really was not her field of interest.

“I’ll have to see if I can get ahead of this work,” she said.  “I’ve got so much piled up.”

The excuse felt lame to her, but it was reasonably valid.  She felt guilty over it nonetheless.

“I understand,” Alex replied.  He sounded a little relieved; perhaps he’d been expecting a straight no.  “But if you do decide to come, you’ll have to leave your system at home.  There’s no modern tech allowed during the ceremony.  Respect and stuff.”

“Okay,” she said, finding that particularly odd.  What if there was an emergency?

Well, she could put in that she’d be incommunicado, and then they’d just page her at the event.  It wasn’t that big a deal.

“I’m glad you’re going, at least,” she told him.  “Things have been so crazy the last few days, everyone’s getting really jittery over this spooky space temple.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, some of the Boku-boku even filed a joint complaint, saying they thought something was down there with them in Resources!”

Alex chuckled.  “I guess you didn’t find anything?” he asked.

“No, just them jumping at shadows.  They said they ‘felt it in their spikes’.  I didn’t even know what kind of sense that was to put into my report.”

“Too many predators from their homeworld, I guess that would make anyone jittery,” Alexander said.

He noticed that he’d been talking for a few minutes.  “Well, good talking to you, honey.  I’m gonna let you get back to your fun paperwork.”

“Byeee~” she sang.

As the call ended, Alex found that something Pirra had said had stuck in his mind.

He really had other things to focus on, but the Boku-boku and their complaint seemed relevant, somehow.

The little aliens came from a world that was rife with large carnivores that could, in historical times, make snacks out of them.  They had been discovered and uplifted by the Bicet, the only other species who they really got along with.  But they retained their spiky growths, which were both a defense and a way for their body to rid itself of excess silicon.

He opened up a new tab on his browser and brought up scholarly research on the Boku-boku.  They typically did not like to be space-faring, and their society had revolved around the collective gathering and storing of resources – a trait that made them very much at home in the modern Resources department.

But how did they react to krahteons, he found himself wondering.

This was a subject that there was not a lot of research into, it was just such a poorly-understood phenomenon, it was hard to test.

There was some research, however.  And from both research and anecdotal evidence, he found some interesting data.

Boku-boku were very sensitive, more than most other species, to krahteons.  The radiation had a nasty habit of interacting with the crystalline structures in their thorns, which made them brittle and prone to breaking.  As they possessed nerves in their growths, they could even feel those micro-fractures, and often described the feeling as “crackly”.

He found that he could not access the details of their complaint earlier, it was outside of his security level.  But he could piece together when it occurred.

It was about the time that Father Sair had gone down there, he realized.

He checked the priest’s public data, to be sure.  But yes; Sair went down, and then minutes later, the Boku-boku filed their complaint.

It had to be coincidence, he thought.

He looked at the chart of patterning for changes occurring in his DNA strand.

It was wrong to think this, he thought.

But his scientific curiosity was too strong.  He ran the publicly-available data of Father Sair’s movements against his corruption pattern.

As the results came in, he did not know how to deal with the panic that was setting in.

Because every time the Father had passed near his DNA strand, it had gained another mutation.

Yet it did not cover all, or even most of the hits.

There was something else, something he was missing.

On a whim, he ran Ambassador Kell’s data against his list.

It did not match – he could not say if Kell was a potential source of krahteons, but he just had not come close by the DNA strand at any point.  His movements were fairly contained to certain parts of the ship that did not include this one.

There was just one other person he could think of.

He told the system to check Apollonia’s movements against his list.

He leaned back, feeling like he’d taken a punch to the gut.

Almost every remaining incident of mutation matched her being in close proximity.

She passed by this area often, on runs.  Her schedule was erratic, and so therefore too was the exposure.  But every single time she passed nearby, his test DNA mutated.

“My god,” he muttered.  The words had, until now, been just a phrase he’d learned to say.  Now, he suddenly found himself wishing he truly believed in a religion, that it wasn’t just a hopeful wish for faith.

There were still some unexplained gaps.  Could . . . could they somehow make these findings make more sense?  Put a context to them that did not disturb him so much?

He set the computer to seeking who else might match this pattern, flailing mentally.  He did not know what this meant; if he should even be reporting it or not.

She was a CR.  It made sense.  Right?

But did anyone else know she was putting out radiation of the same kind as a Leviathan?

And what did it mean that the Father was putting out the same radiation?

He had to be a CR as well, Alexander realized.  It was the only explanation he could think of.

He ran a comparison; krahteonic radiation was poorly understood, and really didn’t behave all that much like other known forms of it.  It wasn’t a form of photon, but more like a charged particle, though even there just what the sort of particle they were could not be explained.

There were certain consistencies, however.  He could compare this exposure to other instances.

It was not nearly as strong as those of a Leviathan, he found.  Either the one they had encountered about a year ago or the records of the one at Terris . . . which the entire ship had just commemorated.  That bothered him on some level.

But there were trace records similar to this.

From The Chain.

The medical facility for people exposed to krahteons, mutated by them.  Like his plant DNA.

He knew that something big, something alarming, had occurred there.  Being the husband of a major Response officer meant he picked up on such things, even when they were supposed to remain secret.

But he did not know what.  Only that it had been . . . strange and alarming, and related to tenkions and krahteons.

Rumors gave him some more ideas.  The stories had spread that someone on The Chain had been mutating out of control.  Becoming something different, something dangerous.  Apollonia had gone onto the station, and the situation had been resolved in a way that had resulted in the death of a resident.

Were the rumors true?  What if . . . what if Apollonia and even the Father were basically like that resident on the Chain?  Were they doomed to become something inhuman and dangerous?

He felt his heart rate increasing.  He knew he was jumping to conclusions.

He almost called Pirra.  But no – she hadn’t been involved in that incident on The Chain.  She might know more, but he’d have to convince her, then she could go up the ranks . . .

He wasn’t in the ranks, though.  He could bring his evidence to the top immediately.

He needed someone with maximum possible clearance.  The Captain was off the ship, and Urle was on-duty.

He called Jaya Yaepanaya.  She was the perfect choice, as Operations commander she’d naturally want to know of any possible danger to the ship, she was laser-focused on such things . . .

He got her message system.  He didn’t have the clearance to get through to her directly.

“Ah, Commander Yaepanaya, this is Alexander Shaw . . . I’m a botanist and I’ve found something that you need to see.  I know it sounds odd, but once I explain it will make sense.  Contact me as soon as you can.  I . . . I’m afraid this could impact the safety of the ship.”

He ended the message.  A lot of other thoughts of what he should say came to him, along with the question of if he was overreacting.

But he had set his course.  He just had to wait for Commander Yaepanaya to get back to him.

---

< Ep 13 part 22 | Ep 13 part 24 >