Bored in deep space - Novelisation -
Chapter 10 - TAMA (3)
My focus remained locked on the rust-coloured sphere below. Down there had been my entire world, for one terrifying, defining week, on that ochre dirt and beneath that ashen sky. It now looked so small, so fragile from this heavenly perch. A lonely marble lost in an endless black ocean. Somewhere down there, in a trench of twisted metal or a canyon of alien rock, Calliope was making the single most important choice of her existence.
And I wasn't there.
I was getting impatient; I had the urge to just go, to launch headfirst into the atmosphere. But I didn't make a movement. Because this woman was still here. A phantom of impossible power, a lingering echo from an era before stars had names. The questions were a tidal wave behind the fragile dam of my purpose. Who was she? What we're they? Why me? Why Calliope? Every instinct from my old life. The cynical office troubleshooter who had spent years unravelling bureaucratic knots and corporate lies, screamed at me to demand answers. Information was a leverage, and context, a weapon.
But right now, all of it felt hollow -- unimportant. A distraction. The grand story of the universe could wait. The history of these ghostly progenitors could remain an unsolved mystery for another day. The only variable that mattered was Calliope. Everything else was background noise.
Without turning to face her, I kept my longing sight fixed on the swirling patterns of the blue and white below. My voice, when I finally spoke, was quiet but steady, a deliberate line drawn in the sand of our strange interview. "Take me to her."
The spectral woman didn't reply immediately. I could feel her eyes on the back of my head, not with menace, but with a profound, analytical curiosity. It was as if she were observing the final, decisive move in a game that had been played across the stars and history.
"As you wish," she finally said, her voice losing its ancient, teacher-like quality, adopting a neutral, professional cadence. There were no more arguments to be made, no more philosophies to dissect. The transaction was complete. Her promise -- to bring me here and become my sword -- had been accepted, and now she would deliver.
There was no lurch. The ship didn't even seem to move. No bone-jarring rumble. No cacophony of automated alarms shrieking about atmospheric stress and hull integrity. My memories of that awful crash landing on the previous Eclipse still replayed in my mind like a broken recorder. I braced myself for a similar experience, but the moment never came. This ship was not just in a different league, it couldn't even be compared. It would be like comparing the difference between a sports car and a wheelbarrow. One moment, the star-dusted black of the void filled the panoramic viewport, and in the next, it didn't.
It was as if the universe had flickered. A single frame cut in a cosmic film reel.
We landed on the surface of Turn Seven before I could even blink.
Where there had been the endless depth of space, there was now the rust-coloured ground of Astellion -- of the same ochre lands of Turn Seven. Above, the sky was a melancholic and dull grey, streaked with pale, ghostly light of the planet's distant, anaemic sun. The transition was so silent, so absolute, it took my breath away. The ship didn't fly; it simply decided to be somewhere else, and it was.
Our previous conversation came back to me. The woman's previous sentiment about living like a king echoed in my mind, no longer sounding like hyperbole. Every meagre morsel of my knowledge, from science fiction movies to the resonant impressions left in this body who had lived as a C-grade technician, told me that this ship could do it -- it could conquer the stars. This wasn't just a ship; it was a divine relic from an age no one alive remembers. With this, I could go anywhere -- be anything. I could watch the birth of a star up close, have my lunch, and be on the other side of the galaxy before the toast got cold. That was the impression; the sheer, unadulterated power was more intoxicating and more terrifying than anything I'd ever been presented with. A no-name, unremarkable, middle manager from a dead century, holding the keys to the cosmos. For a fleeting, wild second, the temptation flared again.
Then it was gone. Extinguished by a cold, hard certainty. I pondered. I was even tempted, but my stubborn, foolish heart only wanted one thing. Yeah, it was completely idiotic, to leave behind this sword for a flying drone I'd only really known for a bit more than a week. But just as her unit description read, she was a lighthouse -- my lighthouse to this brave new world.
Call it human stubbornness. An emotional defiance. Whatever. None of it mattered to me at this moment; if it meant I could have that flying, cube of logic known as Calliope back, I didn't even mind if they took this ship back and left me with the crashed remains of the old SV-Eclipse. I would sooner spend another two-hundred days repairing the flying garbage truck with Calliope and the rovers. At least then, I would feel like me. At least then, my life would have a humble certainty.
I took a deep breath, more sure than ever.
My gaze swept across the alien landscape outside the viewport, a world I once knew intimately. But the wreckage of the old Eclipse was no longer there. There was no gaping trench in the soil, no shattered hull spilling its guts onto the plain. The ground beneath us was undisturbed, pristine save for a deep, rectangular shadow our vessel cast upon it. They had so cleanly picked apart the corpse of the old Eclipse to repurpose the new, it felt like the crash had all just been a bad dream.
"Follow," the woman commanded, her voice now a simple directive, devoid of its earlier academic poetry.
As she walked, the ship seemed to bow in her presence. Doors would open, stairs would lower, and the lights dimmed to just the perfect luminosity. She guided me through the pearlescent hallways of the new Eclipse, through the new, cavernous and neat cargo bay. It looked many times larger than the previous, almost in direct violation of the physics of the conservation of mass and energy.
Several small machines, about half my size -- autonomous, four-legged spider-like drones -- like the rovers of the old ship, moved about with a purpose. They were cleaning, sorting, and occupied menial tasks. They greeted the woman as she passed, pausing in reverence, blinking their tiny blue lights in awe.
We continued through to the airlock. The doors obediently opened for her even without gesture or command. I was reminded of what happened back then, when Grumpy broke into my room to observe me. It was the same. The doors simply obeyed. They hissed as they slid open into a smaller, connecting space, closed behind us, and the door on the opposite side opened in sequence.
I found myself standing on a smooth, polished platform. We -- the entirety of the Eclipse -- floated a few metres off from the surface of Astellion's rust-coloured earth. It stayed completely stable, hovering gracefully and elegantly, as if to deny gravity its purpose. A ramp extended down to give a smooth transition onto land.
I hesitated at the precipice, my gaze fixed on the alien soil. In one hand, the woman held what looked like a small, seamless silver clip. She placed it gently into my hand, her touch excessively cold and otherworldly. The metal clip was cool to the touch, smooth and unnervingly dense for its size.
"For your comfort… and safety," she stated simply. My instinct was to ask what it was. How it worked, and what the catch was. Instead, I just fixed the device onto my tie as if it were a tie clip. A faint warmth bloomed from it, spreading up my arm. The world seemed to shift, the air suddenly feeling rich and breathable, the biting chill of the planet's wind disappearing. An invisible, second skin had settled over me, a shield against an inhospitable environment. I didn't need further explanations, I understood intuitively. This small clip provided the same level of protection, or possibly even to a greater degree, as my previous EVA suit.
I took a deep breath, tasting the foreign air unfiltered by machinery for the first time. This planet had always had a breathable atmosphere, but Calliope insisted I wear the EVA suit just in case. I chuckled bitterly at the memory of her tinny voice coming from her cubic drone. Always nagging. Always… caring. I know; it was probably just a programmed routine to ensure the Captain's safety, but that simple act of caring meant something to me.
It wasn't really all that amazing as I expected. The air was thin, but it carried a strange, metallic scent, like ancient iron and cold stone.
Then I stepped down the ramp.
My booted foot -- my regular shoes, not the heavy mag-clamps of the EVA suit -- met the ground with a soft thud. The sensation was so profoundly real, so mundane, it sent a shockwave through my entire system. I could feel the shift of the sand and grit beneath my sole, the texture of the rust-coloured dust, the faint give of the planet's crust. My boot crunched. I was no longer a visitor encased in armour; I was a man standing on the soil of an alien world. For the first time since waking up in that command chair, the universe felt… tangible.
As the ghostly figure of the woman trailed behind me, I could see it in her eyes. A deep sense of nostalgia for an era so far into the past I couldn't even conceive a vision of it with my limited imagination. For a moment my eyes met hers. Her expression seemingly wanting to say: 'welcome to my home'.
My gaze swept across the landscape. Here, it was a vast, undulating plain of ochre dust and red, jagged rocks, a desolate beauty I'd grown familiar with over those long, lonely days of repair. In the distance, a ridge of monolithic, obsidian mountains clawed at the pale, white sky. It was silent, save for the gentle whisper of the wind that carried no scent of life, only the ancient tang of mineral and stone.
A disquieting thought. This place, the very ground beneath my feet, had a name. Astellion. It had once been a cradle, a home, a capital. I tried to picture it. What did they build here? Towers of light that sang? Cities that hummed with the thought of a billion minds? What music filled the thing, cold air when this wasn't just a planet, but their home. Had children laughed in the dust? Had lovers gazed at those distant stars and seen not just points of light, but futures, destinations?
I stood there and basked in the sight of it all. It wasn't possible for a mere 21st century nobody to really grasp the unfathomable chasm of time that lay between then and now; how did a civilisation that climbed the steps of godhood leave only rusted sand and forgotten iron? How much dust was it, exactly? How many generations had to be born, live, and die before all that was left was this? How many seasons had to pass to erode a godlike civilisation, masters of their world, to less than rubble? A silent sphere of forgotten iron and rock and the sleeping dreams of the machines.
The soles of my boots skid across the sands with a coarse sound. The silence of the plain was a physical pressure, a weight in my ears. I was here. Not as the ignorant, screaming captain of a flying jalopy, or a nameless middle manager from a company no one heard about, but as an ambassador who had the privilege of learning their history. I had a semblance of what slept beneath those mountains, what kind of bones were buried beneath these sands. And I sighed. My mission, the desperate, white-hot drive to find Calliope, felt muted in this vast, quiet moment of reflection. I was just a speck of transient noise in an epoch of stillness.
If I stopped their awakening, how long would they have to wait for another chance?
I could taste the profound loneliness of this place in the back of my throat. I couldn't even begin to imagine what it must feel like to be buried under all this sand, forgotten by the cosmos, alone in the edges of dark space. In a way, I almost pitied them, the so-called Old Machines. I get it, they weren't malicious, they only seemed so from my perspective. Yet, it was also true that they have wronged me; they stole my only friend.
I looked up, not at the ship, but at the spectral form of the woman standing silently beside me. She was watching me, her expression one of patient, serene observation, as if a parent were watching a child figure out how to complete their homework properly for the first time.
"Why?" The question came out as a hoarse whisper, vulnerable in the face of such immensity. "You said you abandoned everything -- this universe -- and left. Your… I assume your species, why did you just… vanish?" As I spoke, I studied her human form; perhaps I'd watched too many sci-fi movies, but I instinctively understood this was probably not her true appearance. If I had to guess, it was simply a form chosen to better suit my aesthetic sensibilities -- to build rapport, curb rejection.
A genuine smile graced her translucent lips. It wasn't a smile of amusement or condescension, but of deep, melancholic remembrance. It was the expression of someone looking at a faded photograph of a loved one long lost. "That is… a deeply personal question," she said, her voice soft as the dust that coated the ground. "And the reason, as with most matters of the heart, is that there is no single one. There are as many reasons as there were souls of my people."
She turned and began to walk, her feet never seeming to actually touch the ground, her form gliding an inch above the rust-coloured soil. I fell into step beside her. The invisible shield shimmered around me, a constant, silent reminder of the protection she afforded. The ground stretched out before us, desolate and unchanging.
"For some…" she began, her gaze fixed on the distant, jagged horizon, "it was because there was nothing left. We had solved every equation. We mapped every star. We understood the building blocks of matter and the architecture of consciousness. We had perfected our universe, and in its perfection, we had silenced its song. There were no more questions to ask, so there was no reason to stay. They simply… faded."
She drifted on, leaving soft, ghostly footprints of pale white lights in the dust. "Others were… bored. Can you fathom it? An existence without hunger, without want, without struggle? An endless, perfect, unblemished peace. It becomes a form of its own prison, a monotony of such sublime clarity that it eventually erodes the will itself. For such people, ceasing to exist was the last great adventure. The one experience they had not yet catalogued."
I listened, the words painting a picture of a reality so alien to my own fraught, desperate existence it was almost impossible to grasp. The 21st century human in me, the corporate cog who had spent a lifetime chasing paychecks and promotions, scoffed at such a complaint. She was right that this was an experience I would never understand unless I were in their shoes. I could surmise, hypothesise, debate, but unless I was that person, I would never get it.
"And then, the curiosity of what lay on the other side was a siren's call for many," she continued. "They saw death not as the end, but a final, uncharted destination. They wanted to see if the darkness behind the curtain held a new kind of light, a new set of rules. They were explorers, taking the ultimate journey into the unknown."
She stopped and turned her pale eyes to me, and for a fleeting second, the vast, ancient intelligence within them seemed impossibly sad, impossible… human. "But perhaps the largest of us," she confessed, her voice barely a whisper against the wind, "were none of these. We did not leave because we had solved everything, or because we were bored, or because we were brave. We left… because others left. We followed those we loved, those we admired, those we could not bear to be without. We were no pioneers; we were simply followers, choosing to journey into the dark together rather than remain in the light alone."
The explanation was so mundane, so painfully, intimately human, that it struck me with the force of a physical blow. What did I expect? Some great conspiracy? An ancient secret? A grand revelation that would overturn my view of the cosmos? I turned my gaze, walking with a dazed contemplation. I pictured it; not a grand, unified exodus of gods, but a slow, trickle-by-trickle departure. Friends, families, communities, one by one choose the void over the perfection, until only the echoes remain.
A bitter, cynical chuckle escaped my lips before I could stop it. It sounded harsh and out of place in the vast, echoing silence of this mausoleum planet. "So you were all just bored," I muttered, shaking my head at the absurd, tragic poetry of it. "Gods, getting bored of winning so much, they wanted to go to the next level." I likened it to a game, but no one -- not even them -- could probably know if there really was another stage. "If Calliope was here, she'd say your people were suffering from a hedonic deficit."
The woman stopped her smooth, floating gait, and turned to face me fully. The look on her translucent features was not one of anger, but of gentle, weary correction, like a professor patiently debunking a common but persistent myth held by a new student.
"You misunderstand, Captain. You continue to apply a label that we never earned, and never sought," she said, her voice soft yet firm, resonating with a deep, unassailable certainty. "We were not gods."
The simplicity of the statement, the flat denial in the face of everything I had witness -- which was probably not even the tip of the iceberg -- was more jarring than any revelation of cosmic power. My mind reeled, trying to reconcile her humility with the ship that could fold space, teleport, her form that could phase through matter, the casual rewriting of a star's map. The very existence of the current Eclipse was an ode to their ability, and even then, that was done by the old machines, their mere progeny.
"But… what you can do," I stammered, gesturing vaguely at her, at the visage of my ship slowly shrinking in the distance as we continued to walk, at the sheer, overwhelming scale of their existence. "The things you've achieved, it's… magic to me. Probably to anyone in this era." Not that I knew anyone in this era, but it was the impression I got from conversing with Calliope.
"Only because we arrived earlier to a vast and empty table, full of potential," she explained, her tone one of simple, factual explanation. She raised a single, translucent hand. "Imagine the universe is a sprawling, un-opened library. An endless collection of books, not yet written, full of blank pages. We were just the first to walk through its doors." Her glowing white eyes seemed to look past me, seeing a history that was invisible to mortal eyes. "We were curious. So we learned the language of the library. We studied the structure of the shelves, the chemistry of the ink, the physics of the paper. We learned how to arrange the letters to form new words, how to bind the pages to create volumes. Given enough time, and with no one to tell you to stop, even a child can become a master librarian."
She let her hand fall, her gaze returning to mine. "What you call magic, or divinity, is simply knowledge. A deeper understanding of the rules. We were the first students, and we had a very, very long time to study. That is all there is to it." She resumed walking towards a destination I still had yet to know. "Unfortunately, as great of students we were, we could not become great teachers."
.
.
.
And so, we walked. We walked, I contemplated. I contemplated and we walked...
The concept of time frayed, then dissolved. The pale, white sun of this world held its position in the grey, washed-out sky, refusing to offer a reliable marker. I could've been walking for minutes, or for days. Each step I took on the rust-coloured soil was a loud, deliberate beat in the silent expanse, a counterpoint to the frantic, pounding rhythm of my own heart. I was Calliope's counterpart; just as Calliope had, hundreds, thousands of simulations kept playing over and over in my head. The decision I had made, the choice the woman had armed me with, was no longer an abstract idea. It was a physical weight, a stone slab of responsibility pressing down on my shoulders, growing heavier with every metre of ground I covered.
Really… it wasn't such a tough decision. It shouldn't have been.
Rescue Calliope.
Rescue Calliope.
Rescue Calliope… and then…
...
… I remembered the day my nephew was born. It was a day just like this; ashen skies, windy, in the sterile block of the hospital. The windows tapped. My family was there. In my sister's arms was her child. That innocent, curious child. I remembered how his eyes looked up to me. Wide, deep blue, like sunken sapphires.
I…
The landscape shifted, slowly, and subtly. The vast, open plains gave way to a field of jagged, geometric spires of rock that jutted from the ground like the fossilised teeth of some gargantuan, long-dead beast. In some aspects, that may have been the truth. They marched in unnatural, almost deliberate lines. We were walking through a graveyard, the faintest ghost of a city laid out in the stone itself. She led the way, her semi-translucent form marching silently over the rough terrain, a silent, silver-blue guide through the ruins of her own history.
The woman did not speak. I did not speak. There were no more philosophical musings, no more historical anecdotes. The tutorial was over; the opponent had pressed end turn and now it was my move… my seventh turn. The silence was her consent, giving me the space to exist within the colossal gravity of my choice. In truth, my decisions truly didn't feel all that momentous, the consequences were too abstract to even begin to comprehend.
All that remained was the destination. My simple, singular choice.
And then I saw it.
Rising from the rust-coloured dust was a structure. Carved into the side of a featureless, mountain of ochre dust, was an entrance. A block of dark, iron grey metal. Heavy bolts. Simple, elegant, winding mechanisms that made it obvious how it was supposed to open. My stomach clenched. It was the kind of door you'd see in a spy movie about a black-site laboratory hidden deep beneath a deserted city. The kind of door designed to hold horrors in, or desperate heroes out. A door that I intuitively knew could withstand the focused blast of a nuclear explosion. Its presence was a statement. The hostile design of the architecture screamed only one message: leave.
This wasn't just the entrance to wherever they were holding Calliope; it was the final wall. The last checkpoint.
My breath caught in my throat. My legs felt heavy, as if the immense gravity of this door was pulling me down into the dust. This was it. The point of no return. Every instinct I had, honed by a life of avoiding confrontations and finding the path of least resistance, was screaming at me to turn back, to accept the ghostly woman's offer of a peaceful life alone in the stars, to forget.
But I refused. I couldn't. I held my ground.
Rescue Calliope…