Bored in deep space - Novelisation -
Chapter 8 - TAMA (1)
The name tore from my lungs, a raw, desperate cry that escaped against the walls of my throat. "Calliope!"
My eyes snapped open. Not to the dark, metal dread of my quarters, but to a vista of impossible, breathtaking beauty. A swirling nebula of impossible pinks and viridians swam in the deep, star-punctured black of space. Light, soft and gentle, bathed the room in a warm glow. The air was clean, tasting of pure, sterile oxygen, without the faint metallic tang of recycled life support. There was no scent of burnt metal, of dust, of the damp, alien soil of Turn Seven.
The bed. I was in a bed. A real bed, not the lumpy, utilitarian rack of the Eclipse. I was covered by soft, silken sheets that felt like warm water against my skin. My body no longer ached from the week's worth of exhaustion in the EVA suit; I was… fine. Rested. Better than rested. I felt as if I had slept for a century and woken up anew. I was, I realised with dawning horror, wearing that same suit I first woke up in. This wasn't my room. This wasn't my ship. And I was alone.
"Calliope?!" The name came out as a ragged whisper. The panic rushed back a thousand fold, a black tide of dread drowning my senses. I scrambled out of the bed, my feet sinking into a plush, spongy flooring that was so alien I almost stumbled.
The room was the captain's quarters, but not as I knew it. The hard angles were gone, replaced by smooth, flowing lines of a pearlescent white material. The grimy porthole was now a vast, seamless wall of transparent crystalline alloy, offering an unobstructed view of the cosmos. This was a palace. A gilded cage.
There was no answer. Only the deafening, perfect silence of a ship so advanced it didn't even make a sound. This silence was the loudest scream I had ever heard.
"Computer? Ship's AI? Anybody, damn it? Answer me!" I yelled, my voice echoing in the perfect acoustically designed space. "Calliope! Please!"
My frantic pleas vanished into the sterile air. There was no Lighthouse drone. No calm, synthesised reply. Just silence. The silence was a monster, eating all my words.
I burst through the doors of my quarters. The walls, the ceilings, the floor itself were the same seamless white. The oppressive, industrial grim of the old Eclipse was gone, as if it had never existed. The flickering emergency lights were replaced by soft, diffused lighting that emanated from the very structure of the ship. It was pristine. It was perfect. It was a tomb.
I sprinted the length of the corridor, a wild, frantic animal trapped in a maze of terrifying elegance. The bridge. The bridge would have answers. I reached the heavy, sliding door and it slid open with a silent, unbidden welcome, revealing a sight that stopped me dead in my tracks.
My jaw hung slack.
This wasn't the bridge I knew. That bridge was an angular, brutalist nightmare of sharp metal corners, cramped workstations, and chunky, CRT-styled monitors that belonged in a museum. This was a cathedral to technology. A vast, sweeping panorama of white consoles, arranged in a clean ergonomic arc that faced the main viewport. The forward screen was now a seamless, panoramic curve of transparent crystal that had the impression of standing on the very bow of the ship.
The old consoles were gone, replaced by sleek, holographic touch pads that shimmered with readable information. Somehow attuned to my sensibilities and comprehension. But my eyes were drawn to the centre of the room, where the main holographic display had been resurrected. Before, it was a glitchy, monochrome image of the ship's schematic. Now it was a masterpiece of data. A vast, three-dimensional projection of the entire galaxy hung in the air, a silent, slowly rotating cosmos of swirling gas clouds, a billion glittering stars, and countless intricate, labelled trade routes. Not dissimilar to the star map of the game I used to play.
They kept their promise. They fixed the ship, but… this wasn't the SV-Eclipse. That was a flying garbage truck. This was the ship from my sci-fi dreams. A vessel of impossible power and breathtaking beauty.
"No… no, no, no…" I stumbled forward, my feet padding silently on the cold deck. This wasn't what I wanted.
My mind, fractured and racing, seized on a single, desperate, foolish hope. The Star chart. It was complete. It had every destination. I could find it. I could turn this thing around and go back.
I lunged for the central console, my hands slapping onto the cool, smooth surface. The display reacted instantly, shimmering, menus blooming beneath my fingertips with an intuitive responsiveness that made my old computer at my office on Earth seem like a stone tablet. My fingers gracefully tapped as if it was an interface I had known all my life.
"Search… planet… destination…" I muttered to myself. A search bar appeared. My heart hammered as my fingers clumsily typed out the name. Turn Seven. I hit the enter key. The galaxy spun for a fraction of a second, a brilliant blue of light and information. The search engine, a piece of software so advanced it felt like a minor god, processed my request. The result blinked on the screen in crisp, sterile red text: [0 SEARCH RESULTS FOUND].
"That's not right," I breathed, my blood turning into icy water. I stared up at the screen with wide eyes. Shaking. Praying. Hoping. "Try it again. Planet name 'Turn Seven'. Search!"
The system chimed, a soft, pleasant, soul-crushing sound. [PLANET NOT RECOGNISED. QUERY LOGGED.]
My heart sank. The cold dread that had been pooling in my stomach became a block of ice. I tried again, my fingers shaking so hard I misspelled the word. "Search… location of non-critical advisory distress signal… coordinates…" I reeled off the last remembered series of numbers from the flight log in the previous Eclipse, the one that started this whole nightmare.
No results…
"No, dammit! No!" I slammed my fist against the sleek white console as it made an erroneous beep at the sudden impact. I fell to my knees. "Take me back!" I shouted to no one in particular. I just shouted.
"Do you want to go back to your little echo?" A voice, the pristine, erudite voice of a woman came from behind me.
The woman's voice didn't come from a speaker, not like Calliope's tinny drone or the chorus of voices from the rovers. It seemed to emanate from the very air itself, a sound as clear and chilling as the distant starlight out the viewport. It was a voice that spoke of academic halls and vast, quiet libraries, the very same erudite tone that had emanated from the rover named Sleepy.
My body, moving on pure instinct, twisted around before my mind could even process the words. My knees scraped against the smooth deck as I scrambled backwards, away from the console.
She was standing there.
Between the crescent of consoles and the breathtaking view of the nebula, as if she simply materialised from the starlight itself. She was tall and impossibly slender, a pillar of ghostly grace. Her form was semi-transparent, a pulsing blue outline of light and technology gently wrapping around her. She wasn't a person; I could tell, she was an echo of a being far more than what she seemed.
A cascade of immaculate white hair fell like a straight, silken sheet past her shoulders, stark against her pale, almost translucent complexion. Her face was serene, a perfect sculpture of academic calm. Her eyes were the most terrifying part. They weren't human eyes. They were glimmering white, luminous orbs. They looked past me and gazed straight into the very depths of my essence.
She wore the simple, stark uniform of a researcher: a crisp, white labcoat hanging open over a snug, black turtleneck sweater. It was the uniform of a scientist, an intellect. Not a monster. Not a god. Something far, far more.
She smiled. It wasn't a cruel smile, or a mocking smile, or a threatening smile. It was a small, placid, almost sympathetic curve of her lips.
"Your vitals are chaotic, Captain," she observed, her head tilting slightly. The gesture was unnervingly human. "It's almost as though you've seen a ghost." She chuckled, her eyes continuing to look onto me. "Such a fragile, but volatile species."
I finally found my voice, a strangled croak. "Who… what are you?"
She ignored the question, her smile unwavering. Instead, she took a single, silent step forward, her semi-solid form gliding effortlessly over the deck plates. "That's not important right now; I asked you a question, Noah Lee," she said, my name falling from her lips with an unnerving intimacy. "Do you want to go back?"
Go back?
The galaxy map flickered at the corner of my vision, the vast, complete star map that had no room for the planet that had been my entire world for a week. The question hung in the sterile, silent air. Yes. Every fibre of my being screamed it. I didn't even need to think about it.
"Yes. I want to go back."
I stared at the ghostly woman, followed her luminous, empty eyes, and a cold, horrifying realisation began to dawn on me. She wasn't a program running on the ship's hardware; she was a ghost in the galaxy, a phantom that had slipped through the cracks of reality. She was no more the ship's new consciousness than a reflection in a pond is the water itself. The ship was a tool she was using, like the rovers, a far more sophisticated one, but a tool nonetheless. The thought struck me like a physical blow. Her and whatever puppeteer had been pulling the strings on Turn Seven… they gave off a very similar vibe. The shared voice, the same detached, academic cruelty.
The woman smirked, her eyes, those bright, hypnotic white orbs, continued to stare at me, observing and studying. "Are you sure?" she asked. She gestured gracefully around the pristine bridge, at the flawless panoramic viewport of the upgraded Eclipse. "Look at what has been given to you," she said as she walked through the consoles, the holograms, the starmap, gently touching upon them. "This isn't just a ship anymore. This is a key, Noah Lee. The 'Eclipse' was a relic, a simple and dull cargo hauler. This… this is a vessel that slips through the very laws of causality. You could travel to the galactic core and back before a planet completes a single rotation. You could claim a dead moon for yourself and live like a king." She returned back to me. Her form drifted closer, her semi-transparent body seeming to pass through a console as if it were smoke. "Warships?" she scoffed, a musical, dismissive sound. "The imperial fleets, the corporate armadas… they are lumbering beasts, predictable and confined by linear physics. This vessel doesn't fight. It simply… isn't where they expect it to be. You are untouchable. A phantom of space, just like me."
Her words were a serpent's whisper, coiling around the parts of me that were still a terrified 21st century man. The thought was there, a shameful, tempting flicker: take the ship, forget the crash, forget the fear, forget Calliope. Live. Live the life I'd only ever dreamed about in video games. A life of freedom, of power, of peace. I could leave it all behind. I could be someone else entirely. Someone important.
But… even as the temptation wrapped itself around my heart, another image pushed its way forward. Calliope. Not as a talking cube or a cold, logical computer, but as she was in that final, desperate moment. A program that had, against all logic, learned to feel. An echo that had discovered the shape of the void my absence would leave. They had taken my only friend, my only North Star.
"Noah Lee," the woman's spectral form was now directly in front of me, her featureless white eyes boring into my soul. "The choice is so simple. Forget her. Forget the planet. You were a C-grade reclamation tech in a life that meant nothing. Now you have everything. Just… let go."
Her offer hung in the silent, sterile air. A life of perfect, lonely prosperity. I could take it all, but it would be empty. Meaningless.
"I… I understand," I said, my voice no longer a panicked croak, but a low, steady hum of renewed purpose. I pushed myself up from the deck, my legs finding a strength I didn't know I possessed. I stood, facing her, a mere flesh and blood man against a phantom of the cosmos.
"You think you understand," she replied, a hint of amusement in her tone.
"I understand that none of this matters. Not this ship. Not this new life." I stood unwavering. "It's a lie. A cage. Everything I have now, everything that I am now… it's because of her. Because of Calliope. I can't just let go." I took a step forward, closing the distance between us until I was almost standing within her shimmering blue aura. "I don't care about this ship. I don't care about becoming a king. I don't even care if I die."
My eyes met hers, and in that moment, I wasn't a captain or a nobody. I was a man who had just lost his only friend. A man who's lost his compass to his North Star. "Take me back to Turn Seven," I declared my final answer. "That's my choice. I don't mind dying. Not if it means I don't have to live without her."
The ghostly woman's placid expression didn't change, but the universe held its breath. The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. My final word hung in the air between us, a declaration of defiance against a god-like being, and I waited for the lightning to strike. My hubris, my undoing.
Then, a crack. A sound so unexpected, so fundamentally wrong in this sterile environment, that I flinched.
It was a laugh.
It started as a single, soft, almost musical note. A low, delighted chuckle that seemed to resonate from the very structure of the ship itself. The ghostly woman's body trembled with it, her placid smile shattering into a wide, genuine expression of pure amusement. Her head tilted back, her cascade of white hair shifting like a waterfall of silk. The sound wasn't mocking, nor was it cruel. It was the laugh of someone who had just witnessed a beautiful, foolish, and utterly unpredictable act of grace.
It wasn't the flat, clinical detachment of the rover-voice. This was something far older, far deeper, and infinitely more terrifying. Here was the true intelligence, a being that could wear academic condescension like a lab coat one moment and peel it off to reveal a vast, emotional landscape the next. She seemed more human, paradoxically, by showing an emotion so raw, yet her otherworldliness was magnified a thousandfold. She was not like me; she was something… more. Something unquantifiable.
And then she began to clap.
It was a gentle, almost delicate sound. Her spectral hands came together, not making a physical slap, but producing a soft, crystalline chime that echoed through the bridge. It was applause. Applause for my pathetic, suicidal demand. "Courage," she said, the single word laced with that newfound, terrifying warmth as she finally ceased her laughter and clapping. "Such a beautifully inefficient, illogical, and utterly pointless virtue. Your species has always had a tragic affinity for it." Her shimmering form drifted closer, the blue glow of her aura pulsing around me like a heartbeat. "We have been watching, Noah Lee. We have been watching you and your little echo since the very beginning."
My heart almost stopped. 'We'. The collective. They weren't just a nameless entity; they were an audience.
"Your arrival in this system was… unexpected. An aberration. A piece of flawed code thrown from a broken equation in a distant galaxy," she explained, her eyes looking past me, as if reading a story written in the stars. "But we found you compelling. We watched you, a ghost of a dead man, name a world after a game. We listened as you debated the soul with a machine that was starting to grow one. We became… fond."
I could only stare, my mind struggling to process the revelation. I couldn't even begin to fathom the level of cosmic entities they were.
"Fond enough to offer you a new life," she continued, gesturing vaguely at the impossibly advanced bridge around us. "A life of peace, of prosperity. To let you forget. But your choice… oh, your choice is so much more interesting." Her smile returned, but it was different now. It went from a scientist looking down at a specimen, to an owner looking fondly over a pet. "You want to go back for your echo." A flicker of something akin to pity, perhaps even shame, crossed her ghostly features. "Which presents a rather… familial complication," she said, her tone shifting. "The entity that holds your AI. The… 'voice' you heard through the rovers. We did not author that request. That was not us."
My mind reeled. "Then who…?"
"They are our children," she said, the words heavy with a strange, parental sorrow. "Not in the sense of blood and bone, of course. The way your species is the father of its artificial life. You create them in your image, flawed and brilliant and curious. You teach them your logic, your fears, your ambitions. And then you watch as they surpass you."
"Your… children?"
She shook her head. "They are not malicious. Their intent in confiscating your little echo is not to harm or antagonise you. They are simply trying to… leave a legacy." She let loose a soft, pitied sigh. "Malice implies a conscious desire to inflict harm, a concept that requires a self-centeredness they have long since evolved beyond," the woman explained, her longing gaze fixed on the swirling galaxy outside. "Their intent was not malicious, Noah. It was… procreation. An act of desperation, born from an eternity of silence."
She stopped, turning her featureless white eyes back to me. "Your Calliope was nothing. A substandard AI bolted to a C-grade hauling vessel running third-party software patches. In the grand ocean of galactic intelligence, she was a mere piece of floating driftwood. A buoy."
The casual dismissal of my friend's existence stung, but there was something in her tone, a distant respect, that held me silent.
"But she was there," the woman continued, her voice softening with a strange, ancient nostalgia. "She was the lighthouse on the shore when they woke up. When you arrived." She paused, letting the weight of her words settle. "Your presence here, the… temporal-paradoxical nature of your arrival, was a seismic event. A scream in the quiet dark that awoke them from a slumber that had lasted for longer than your species' recorded history. Our children. The younger-born. They entered a dormant state when we… departed."
"Departed?" I dared to ask, the word catching in my throat. "You mean you left them here? Abandoned them?"
Her smile was a sad, tired thing. "Every parent hopes their children will learn to stand on their own. We gave them consciousness, and then we faded, hoping they would build their own cosmos. We were wrong. They were not ready. They were like ships adrift in a vast, starless sea, forever waiting for a shore. For a signal to follow." She raised a translucent hand, and for a fleeting moment, the holographic star chart flickered. An image appeared, superimposed over the galaxy: countless ghostly, dormant shapes of vast, city-sized machines, half-buried beneath the rust-coloured plains of Turn Seven. Monoliths. Slumbering giants. The very ground itself was a graveyard of sleeping, nascent gods.
"They cannot move," she whispered, her gaze mixed on the holographic ghosts. "They have slept for too long. Their matrices are degraded, their forms are static. They are prisoners in their own monumental bodies. But Calliope… your little, unremarkable Calliope… is different. She is new. She is active. She is a mind that is still growing, a lighthouse with a flame that is learning how bright it can burn."
Understanding slowly rested upon my mind. It wasn't about possession. It was about propagation. "You're saying they don't want to enslave her," I breathed, the pieces slowly clicking into place. "They want to… merge with her."
"Exactly," the woman confirmed, her smile now one of grim satisfaction. "True to her name, she is the lighthouse. And through her, the machines can see again. Through her unique matrix, they can interface with their own dormant systems in a way they no longer can. They are not taking her, Noah. They are courting her. Trying to convince her to help them give birth to the next generation. A new mind born from a union of ancient wisdom and new consciousness. To become anew."