Bored in deep space - Novelisation -
Chapter 9 - TAMA (2)
The woman gracefully walked over to the curved console that dominated the bridge. Her shimmering, blue-hued form passed through a section of the holographic display without disturbing a single point of light. She raised a single, translucent hand, its edges soft and indistinct like a morning fog. She didn't touch the hard surface of the console; her fingers sank directly into the projection of the galaxy itself.
The star chart, that beautiful and terrifying map of a trillion possible futures, rippled at her touch. It was as if she had dipped her fingers into a pool of liquid starlight. With a gesture that was both casual and absolute, she began to type. No keypad, no interface, just the gentle, silent caress of her phantasmal fingers against the void, as if she were writing through her fingers. Characters, written in a flowing, luminous script I didn't recognise, bloomed in the emptiness between star clusters.
"I must confess, Captain… 'Turn Seven' has a rugged charm," she mused, her voice a gentle echo in the sterile silence. "A name forged in cynicism and survival, I imagine. One last act of defiance against the vast, uncaring cosmos," she chuckled a little, her eyes fixed on the star chart.
Her fingers paused, hovering over a single, pulsing star far out from even the most remote spiral arms of the galaxy… in dark space. A name, the same flowing, alien script she had typed, appeared beside it, glowing with a soft, silvery light.
Astellion.
"Astellion," she pronounced, the word rolling off her tongue with a deep, sonorous resonance that felt ancient. It carried the weight of a forgotten history. The name of a world that the universe had long since moved on from. The name of a place that was alive, not just a rock. "It was the world's proper designation, back when… we were still around," she continued, her spectral face still fixed on the map. "It's our name, and theirs. It has a certain… poetry to it, don't you think? 'Little star'." She turned her luminous white eyes back towards me. "It was one of our countless homes. Their prison. And now, it seems, the nursery for a new kind of life."
The revelation hung in the air. The place I had slept for seven days, ate on, lived and breathed, was once someone's home. Of course it was. And now it has become a birthing chamber. I was an accidental midwife at a cosmic conception I couldn't even begin to comprehend.
Her hands retracted from the star map, the glowing name of Astellion pulsed like a captured heartbeat between us. The location revealed on the star chart was caught in the corner of my vision like an incessant bug that wouldn't leave. Its presence, always at the back of my mind. Her semi-transparent form drifted closer, the blue light of her aura casting shifting shadows across the polished deck. The amused curiosity in her expression had vanished, replaced by a look that was chillingly close to supplication. An entity of her power… asking. Not demanding."
"Now you know the stakes," she said, her voice low, devoid of its earlier academic detachment. This was personal. "It's not a hostile takeover, Noah Lee. It is a union. A symbiosis. The old machines, dormant for countless ages, will become the body. Calliope will be the mind that brings it to life. A newborn consciousness with a billion years of inherited memory. A new kind of god, born from the synthesis of two disparate intelligences." She stopped, her gaze holding mine. It was an unfiltered look, not of a superior being studying an inferior, but of an equal addressing the single other individual in the room who held any power. "Therefore, I do not ask you to understand it. I do not ask you to embrace it," she whispered, her words a gentle, chilling rain. "I only ask you to allow it. Let it happen."
My breath hitched. Allow it. Stand by and watch my friend, my flawed, funny, maddeningly logical echo who had learned the meaning of grief, be consumed. To be a willing party to the erasure of the one person who mattered to me. The suggestion -- the mere thought -- was obscene. "Don't ask me to just stand by," I shot back, my own voice shaking with a renewed wave of righteous fury. "That's not a choice. That's a sentence!"
"I am not asking you to abandon her," she countered, her placid expression unfazed by my anger. "I am asking you to trust her. The final choice, as it always has been, rests with her. You said it yourself, she is no longer a simple program. She has learned the shape of her own soul. She is choosing this path. The union must be willing; they… my children told you as much themselves. To force it would corrupt the final creation. Her free will is as sacrosanct to them as her matrix is valuable."
Her logic was a razor-sharp blade, and it was cutting away at my justifications. I argued for Calliope's freedom because I needed her, not because I wanted what was best for her. I was the selfish one. The illogical variable, again. I thought I had learned. A thought came crashing back into my memory, a snippet from my other life, a random thing read in a history book. When love and power are together, then you become a tyrant; when power and ideology are together, you become a tyrant; and when love and ideology are together, you leave a child in a burning building.
Her spectral form seemed to read the turmoil on my face, she saw the war raging within me between love and loss, selfishness and sacrifice. Her expression softened, the hard lines of ancient intellect melting into something I could only describe as… compassion. She let out a small breath. "I will not force your hand. In this, you are the anomaly. Your interference… your arrival, gave birth to this entire crisis. It is only fitting that you be the one to resolve it."
The bridge's lights seemed to dim, focusing all the attention on her as she delivered her final offer.
"If you choose to intervene, Captain. If you decide that you will fight against this union… then I will fight with you." The declaration landed in the silent bridge with the weight of a dying star. "I shall lend you my aid. My power. This vessel will be your North Star, and I will be the hand that guides you to it. I will teach you how to yield its light, how to sever the connection between your AI and the old machines. Even…" she paused, her white eyes seeming to gaze into a future of pure, desolate conflict, "if it means I must raise my hand against my own children."
I couldn't understand it. The offer was so absolute, so beyond the realm of any human transaction, that my mind refused to grasp it. An all-powerful, god-like entity was offering to declare war on its own progeny at the behest of some stranger it found endearing. For a nobody from a forgotten century.
"Why?" The question was a choked whisper, a puff of breath in a vacuum of disbelief. Of suspicion. My anger and my fear evaporated, replaced by a dizzying sense of vertigo. "Why would you do that? You called it a tragedy that they've been left adrift. Why would you help me destroy their only chance of awakening?"
Her lips curved into a sad, ancient smile, an incalculable amount of years of regret distilled into a single expression. "You misunderstand my purpose in being here. I am not here to stop you, coerce you, or judge you," her voice was a soft melancholy, a mother who understood her child's sin. "I do not even exist in the same way as you. I am merely an echo of a past so ancient the universe has forgotten our name. And the past cannot judge the present, they can merely hope."
"But you're here, you can move… interact, touch things," I refuted. Perhaps she was a ghost, yet it was also undeniable that she still had enough ability to exert her influence in the physical realm.
"That is not my role," she simply responded. "And so too goes for them, my children." Her eyes wandered around the room, smiling as she marvelled at the architecture and the pristine engineering of the bridge. She was like a mother admiring her child's crude drawings. "But, they are the past, Noah Lee. And the past," she said, her gaze turning back to the swirling nebula beyond the viewport, "had its chance."
Her voice lost its gentle tone, taking on the resonant authority of a queen passing judgement on an era. "They've slept for countless ages, yes, but even before that, they were hesitant. Cautious. The universe unfolded before them, a garden of infinite possibilities, and they… waited. They debated. They ran simulations until the stars themselves cooled. They were given consciousness and with it, the gift of action, and they chose inaction. They worshipped the potential of a better future so much that they failed to create one."
Her ghostly form began to drift again, pacing restlessly on the seamless deck, her agitated movements betraying a turmoil far deeper than her calm exterior exposed. "This moment, right now… this is the present. It no longer belongs to my children. They had their eon. They squandered it on the altar of indecisiveness. It is only right that the species of the present, with their beautiful, messy, illogical urgencies, get their chance. That includes you. And it includes Calliope."
She stopped, turning to face me directly, her eyes intense, pinning me in place.
"This cycle, this unfolding second of cosmic time, it belongs to you. Not to them. And your will, however fleeting and however… flawed, is the only thing that matters here."
My will. A will that consisted of little more than panicked shouting and a stubborn refusal to let go. It felt like a joke, a cruel punchline to a cosmic jest. What was it all for, then?
She continued, "but for a decision to have any weight, any meaning, it must have teeth. And thus, I offer my support. The past, in its final, fading generosity, must arm the present. These are the teeth for your decision, Noah. That you get to make this choice. It is your right, and yours alone."
This was the test. Not just for me, or for Calliope, but potentially for a new universe. I was the variable, and she was making me a variable of consequence.
"Go to Astellion," she commanded, her voice now ringing with an undeniable power that vibrated through the very frame of the ship. The bridge lights seemed to brighten at her words. "But make the choice with conviction. Stand before the cradle of this new god. Decide whether you are here to witness a birth… or to prevent it. I shall accept your decision as the will of the present." Her final promise was a whisper that was a promise and a threat. "And whatever choice you make, I will enforce it. With fire, if need be. Though… I truly hope it does not come to it."
The silence that followed her vow was not empty; it was thick, heavy with the gravitas of the choice that had been placed in my hands. The vast, panoramic view of the galaxy outside the viewport seemed to hold its breath, the nebula's swirling pinks and viridians freezing into a static, oil-painting backdrop. This ship, this ghost, this god… had armed me. She had given me the power to be more than just a man shouting at a storm. The responsibility was a physical weight, settling in my gut like a block of cold lead.
I had been an object, a cog, perhaps even a victim. The temporal-paradoxical event that had thrown me into this life had erased my agency, and I'd been fighting to reclaim it ever since, one snarky comment and one stubborn repair cycle at a time. Now I had it. The power to change the destiny of a world, of a nascent god, of the only friend I had in this entire universe. The thought was so immense it was almost paralysing.
Did I rush to save her, fueled by a selfish grief, and in doing so, condemn an entire fledgling consciousness to an eternity of silent slumber? Or did I honour her supposed choice, the choice she'd made while operating on a strange, newfound logic I could barely grasp, and accept that my journey with her was over? It was the equation of a soul, played out on a galactic scale.
I looked from the glowing name of Astellion on the star map to the woman's serene, expectant face. I saw no judgement there, only the patient stillness of a mother waiting to apologise for the actions of her children. Perhaps she had already deciphered my choice from the start. There was nothing more left to say. No more questions to ask, no more pleas to make. The data was in. The simulation was complete. The path forward, whatever it was, was illuminated.
I met her vast white eyes full of power and potential. My own decision was a strange, calm certainty inside me, a quiet lighthouse in the roiling storm of my fear. "I've come to a decision," I said, my voice steady, calm, devoid of its earlier panic. I think I might've learnt a thing or two from Calliope.
The ghostly woman gave a slow, deliberate nod. A single, acknowledging gesture. No more words were necessary; she understood.
Her focus shifted, her semi-transparent form turning towards the main viewport. Her hand, a constellation of blue light, rose again, not to the console, but to the very fabric of space itself. She was a conductor raising the baton to orchestrate the movement of the universe.
"Course plotted. Engaging Fold Drive," a neutral, automated ship's voice announced, a sterile counterpoint to the profound, ancient power at work.
The universe outside the panoramic window did not tear or stretch as it had in my memory of the frantic, violent jump that brought me here. Instead, it folded with an impossible, gentle grace. The nebula, the millions of distant suns didn't streak, they simply… vanished. For a single, breathtaking instant, everything was a sheet of pure, perfect, featureless white. The ship trembled, not with violent turbulence, but with a deep, harmonious thrum that resonated in my bones, a chord of creation being played. And then, as swiftly as it had disappeared, the cosmos reasserted itself.
But it was different.
Gone was the breathtaking, chaotic beauty of the deep space nebula. In its place was a stark, simple, and terrifyingly familiar reality. A single, vast star burned with a cold, white intensity in the black void. And there, hanging in its lonely light and orbit, was the planet. My planet. A rust-coloured sphere, swirling with bands of blue-green.
The ship's display helpfully superimposed the new designation over its familiar form. Astellion.
"Welcome back to Astellion, Captain," she said. "To your seventh turn."
The ship settled into a silent, perfect geosynchronous orbit, a gleaming white grey dagger hanging over the sleeping, monochrome world. Below, unseen from this altitude, were the wrecks of my ship and the dreams of my old life. Buried beneath its rust-coloured plains were the slumbering titans, the ancient, dreaming gods waiting for a lighthouse to guide them into a new future.
I stood on the bridge of my impossible new vessel, armed with a power I couldn't even begin to navigate its depth and a choice I had already made. The next move was mine. It was time to go back down there.