Remember the Starfighter (36 page)
Read Remember the Starfighter Online
Authors: Michael Kan
These thoughts were actually nothing new. Perhaps since her inception, Arendi had always wrestled with them. The doubts always there.
Why
, she asked,
Why be human?
She understood the answer, but in return only felt the burden. To her, it was not natural. She was just an imitation. An imperfect one at that.
The dream, however, would not end there. Most of the time, Arendi was alone, and barely lucid. But then there would be those brief moments, where she could sense them. Two people watching over her. A man and a woman. Eventually, Arendi would realize she knew them. This was no dream, but real.
The specialist and her kind smile — it had become etched in her memory, even as she could barely see it anymore. The woman was silent as ever, but Arendi could tell that she cared. How she so wished to hear that illusive voice. It must exist, Arendi declared into the silence. It must!
She wanted to laugh, enjoying her delusional state. So she did, chuckling inside her mind. But it did not last. Not when she saw him. The sad-eyed captain.
Was it real, or just Arendi’s imagination? Either way, the memory of him was etched into her mind as well. But it was less of an image, and more of a feeling. The touch of his hand. Whether it be against her cheek, or around her hand, she remembered the sensation. She wanted to feel it again.
Julian
, she thought.
If only.
He must have rescued her. They must have rescued her. They had been watching over her this whole time.
Did they really care?
Arendi thought about this, only to be led back to the touch of the captain’s hand. Even if she did die, at least, Arendi could say she had felt something — something that had been good, something that had been memorable.
Arendi imagined her hand and reached out. Yes, she could feel it. He was there. They were still with her. She laughed.
Date: June 19
“So, she’s been awake this whole time?”
Julian stood there baffled and looked down at Arendi’s paralyzed face.
“Really? What do you mean?”
The specialist approached from the other end of the room. She handed him an electronic slate. But this time, she was not so speechless.
She stared at Arendi, when the firm, but beautiful voice came. The time flow had returned to normal, the pace of their movements no longer a chaotic puzzle.
Not once did she open her mouth, but the words still originated from her augmented body, the rhythm flowing to the glow of her facial implants.
Julian continued to read over the data on the slate, stroking the emerging beard on his face. He then dropped the device to his side, all too relieved.
“Thanks Faraday,” he said, looking at the opposite end of the room. “You really are a genius.”
He looked down at Arendi, and was about to touch her hand, when he awkwardly pulled back.
“It’s good to see you again Arendi. Or I guess, you were there all along,” Julian said. “We missed you.”
She remained motionless. But Arendi could hear every word, her perception fully restored.
Yes,
she said in her mind.
I missed you as well.
Arendi was ready to return.
After almost three weeks of inoperability, Arendi had finally regained control.
Her body had changed. Far more than she had imagined.
Her systems had immediately registered it, the apparent loss and reconfiguration evident. And yet Arendi only needed to feel it; her artificial body was no longer confined behind plates of metal. She opened her eyes, and looked to see it gone, the armor and its segmenting layers of nano-machines dismantled and lifted away. Instead, was a white fabric, the medical gown covering what was her bare naked skin.
She arose from the operating table startled, holding the cloth to her waist. Arendi then reached to her brow, and felt her hair unfurled, the long and unkept locks touching the back of her neck. She glanced at her surroundings, and found it to be a secluded chamber, the walls strangely crystal in form, like they had been fashioned out of ice.
It was the specialist, the graceful voice synthesized from her artificial implants. She stood only inches away, and greeted Arendi with that same signature smile, a dimple creasing along her right cheek.
“Yes,” Arendi replied. “You are Alysdeon.”
She closed her eyes, and gave a subtle and polite bow.
Arendi balked, still rattled by her present condition.
“What happened?” she asked. Arendi felt decidedly different. Exposed. Vulnerable. She went to feel her belly beneath the fabric.
The specialist gestured to what remained of it. The millions of tiny machines lay dormant, and unhinged, floating in a container of liquid behind her. Arendi pushed herself off the operating table, and watched the once solid armor swim like liberated glitter.
Arendi nodded. But it wasn’t just the armor that was gone. She hugged her belly harder.
“My power source. It’s been altered.”
It explained the change — the near limitless energy replaced by something more mechanical and finite. She could not even feel it, the reactor a listless device, running at a cool and capped rate. It was practically nothing compared to the almost feral power source Arendi had once carried — the power that had been on the verge of collapse.
“It was destroyed, wasn’t it?” she said. “The exiled particle.”
The specialist tilted her head, curious.
She could tell that Arendi would only have more questions. So she came to her side, and fondly took Arendi’s hand.
They had moved deeper down into the crystalline chamber, the whole facility essentially a research lab, when Arendi came to the large window. It was a starless view, but filled with its own mysterious medium.
“Are we in hyperspace?” Arendi asked. “On board a starship?”
This clearly wasn’t a SpaceCore station anymore; the structure she was standing in was developed out of some kind of advanced, and likely alien technology. But the window held something else, the view filled with its own eccentricity, the substance moving in the colors of cerulean blue.
The specialist nearly chuckled, pressing a hand over her lips.
The specialist then brought Arendi in closer, and pointed to the gyrating waves in the glass.
Arendi looked back at the view, the blue almost limitless. Water, she thought, stunned by the realization. She had never witnessed such a sight before, only having seen such things from the historical recordings. On what had become a static Earth. Such pleasantries had been lost to her.
Now to be dropped in one, it all seemed so vast. The ocean clear and idyllic. The halos of light glimmering through the sea.
“Carigon,” she replied, touching the glass. “It’s amazing.”
But the specialist had not brought Arendi to the window simply to see the view. She had wanted her to meet a friend.
For a moment, the glass held nothing but water and the twinkle of what only could be a sun high above.
Looking through the open sea, Arendi glimpsed at a haze forming deep within. Ripples and bubbles fanned out, the figure large and approaching fast. Arendi thought it to be an underwater craft of some kind. But she was wrong; the object was alive and swirling through.
The alien swam with the elegant gyration of its frill-like fins, as if it belonged in the water. It cut through the ocean, only to stop and float inches from the glass. Arendi backed away, almost scared.
Like the specialist, the alien glowed, covered in a patchwork of its violet and crystal rubies. Parts of its body seemed both organic and oddly mineral in form. The fins gently drifting in the water, while in the center, a large octagonal jewel stared back.
“He is an Ula?” Arendi asked.
Arendi had only seen a few aliens on board Alliance Command. But most had been from a distance, or appeared smaller and less intimidating. This “Ula”, however, was so different, evolving with an anatomy that bore little resemblance to anything human. It continued to stare back at her, its jewel-like eye twitching back and forth.
Arendi was barely paying attention, when she heard the words “power source” and “unstable.”
“Where is it now?” she asked, trying to ignore the odd view of the alien in the window.
They left the area and entered into an adjoining room, lit in white. It was lined with not only crystal, but also forms of unrecognizable equipment, shaped in statues of silver. Arendi walked past the technology intrigued, and she quickly found that all of it encircled what the room contained in the center, the pillar rising from the floor.
At the top was what remained of Arendi’s power source, the exotic energy pulsating like a pocket of abyss. It was the only object in the room colored in black, the darkness conspicuous.
Arendi saw it, the particle held inside a lens-like shell no bigger than her hand. It glowed, not in any light, but in a void no different from space itself. So seemingly empty, she thought. What a lie. In truth, it contained so much more. Operating on laws outside the physical universe.
“Then it survived,” she said, approaching the containment pod.
The specialist nodded, watching the particle radiate its darkness.
“Yes,” she replied. “Or at least, that’s what we believe. My creator had managed to harvest it on Earth.”
Arendi subtly shook her head. “We had to develop an entirely new theory of physics to try and understand it. As you must already know, it cannot survive on its own in our universe.”
<
Faraday is astounded. In a way, the particle is akin to anti-matter, but counteracts with space and time itself.>
“Yes, but only if it can be contained. The Endervars use the technology to power their ships. Even their shield. We experimented with it, and found that when taken to its extreme, the particle becomes more powerful, but unstable, and immediately begins to lose integrity.”
Arendi trailed off, as she continued to stare at the containment pod in silence. She clenched her teeth, and crossed her arms tightly.
“Unstable,” she continued. “My systems...they...”
Arendi knew it to be true. She had already performed a diagnostic, and found her systems to be fully operational. “Thank you,” she said. But still, Arendi remained fixated on the power source before her. She had never seen it like this before. Extracted and laid bare. For so long it had been a part of her. Even defining her.
Arendi almost said yes to the request. It was, after all, once so intertwined with her. But she looked down at the containment pod, and recalled how she had tried to tap its power. Reactively, she clutched the gown covering her body, and remembered the last attempt. It had nearly killed her.
“Please,” she stammered. “Continue studying it. I will assist you in any way possible.”
Arendi watched as the crystal ceiling above opened into another windowed view of the ocean. The Ula known as Faraday floated in the water and eventually approached the chamber’s exterior, melding its body against its surface.
<
Faraday also see it’s potential. He wants to control it, just like you did on the SpaceCore station.>
“Then perhaps I can help,” she answered back. “I understand the overall patterns. I even devised some algorithms that could tap into it on some level.”
The specialist looked hard at the being above, the Ula signaling back with a flash of its central jewel. It brought out a smile.
Gradually, a pair of pillars emerged from the ceiling, and pointed down at the containment pod, in what was another deep scan of the Endervar particle. As the pillars formed, growing out of the room’s structure, Arendi thought about what more she could do. She looked off at the technology around her, and wondered what it could offer. And yet still, Arendi could tell she was forgetting something. She glanced down at her gown, and then saw her naked hands.
“Where is Julian?” she asked.
“Colonists?”
The specialist could have easily messaged Julian. But she looked at Arendi, and saw that she was barely clothed, her hair unraveled and in a mess of tangles.
She came to Arendi, and glanced at her body type, noticing her thin figure.
.