was painfully mechanical, sterile.
simon i love you
maggie, don’t leave me. i can’t do this without you.
you can
I CAN’T LOSE YOU AGAIN!
love
maggie, i—
…
i love you, maggie.
“Simon? Are you okay?” Her face could not conceal her concern; her hand rested on the side of his face. He blinked hard, his vision momentarily blurred with an image of a great black vessel, a piercing white light shining from its center, a mechanical scream as atoms were torn apart…
“Maggie?”
“What is it?” She leaned over to him, squeezed his hand. Radiant in the firelight and her own beauty, she gazed at him. With those hypnotic gray eyes, a grin returned to her face.
“I…I—”
“Simon, shh…” Her finger touched his lips.
Their eyes locked.
He pulled her close in the crimson light.
She kissed him, passionately. They fell into one another, furious desire seeking release in the entwining of their bodies.
The campfire flickered.
The embers burned in the haze of the night.
They were one.
“Hungry?”
“Hmm?” Patra turned to West, a distracted look on her face. She had been staring into the clouded orb at the center of the chamber. West was next to her, rummaging through his pack. He held out two unlabeled metal cans. “Oh. Sure. Thanks.” She took the can from his outstretched hand.
“No problem.” He cracked open the seal on his can, revealing a mysterious pink substance that in no way resembled meat but most likely was. “Fresh from the ruined suburbs of Chicago. Yummy.” He extracted a bit of pink quasi-protein and tentatively placed it in his mouth. His face attempted to hide his disdain and didn’t entirely succeed. He swallowed, shook his head, put the top back on the can. “Better save this for later.”
Patra looked down at the can West had given her, placed it back in the pack. “Not really hungry anyways.” She turned back to the orb, which weakly illuminated her silver-laced face. Her voice still filled West with an odd feeling that he was conversing with a machine.
They had explored the vessel from end to end, finding little that they could comprehend. It was obvious that whatever had piloted the vehicle was about their size, perhaps humanoid. They traversed the interior until there was nowhere else to go, which really wasn’t that far. They found the entry point that Milicom had burned into the surface of the vessel. An airlock to the surface had been constructed after the discovery of the vessel. They would explore the surface later. For now, the interior of the vessel was much more important than an abandoned mining town.
From the central hub where the orb was contained, only three “hallways” went outwards in a T from the orb chamber. Everything was constructed of the same matte black substance, which felt like metal and was strangely cold to the touch. One of these paths led to a small spherical room within the central hub with recesses in the walls covered with glass. They reminded West of the stasis tanks used to regenerate burn victims he had seen used after the Quebec War. On the “ceiling” of this room was a circular panel that neither West nor Patra could open. Whatever lay beyond that panel would have to remain a secret. West did not want to attempt to shift through the unknown black material of the vessel.
The other two slightly canted hallways led to identical spherical chambers on opposite sides of the vehicle. West and Patra were amazed at the size of the chambers; they had not known how big the vessel really was. All along the wall of the spherical expanse were circular hatches. They attempted to open one of the hatches and succeeded, but the interior was empty. The cylindrical interiors of these odd spaces were just big enough for West and Patra to enter, but they did not. What could have been stored in these chambers? There must have been thousands of the cylinders in each of the spherical rooms, each the size of a human… West thought about the possibilities and decided that he no longer wanted to think about what the chambers were used for.
Whoever or whatever had constructed this vessel obviously had a fascination of spherical spaces and tubular hallways, a bleak and utilitarian interior architectural design suitable for the cold infinite black between the stars. Nowhere could they find any control panels, any viewscreens, anything at all that indicated the origin of either the vessel or the vanished occupants thereof. Had Milicom taken the crew’s remains, or had there been no crew? Certainly the area had been secured long before either West or the other Styx had been created. There were so many unanswered questions.
West suddenly felt suffocated sitting in the orb chamber, watching the black swirls of color play upon the surface of the dying light. He stood, picked up his pack. Patra understood how he felt. “Let’s get out of here.” West looked back over his shoulder as they left the chamber. “There’s a town up there. The light’ll be here when we get back.”
They walked up the inclined hallway to where the Milicom airlock had been burned into the hull of the vessel. West activated the opening mechanism and the massive door silently slid open. They stepped through and the interior door closed behind them as the exterior door smoothly opened before them. A wash of surprisingly cold air wafted from the mineshaft. They ascended to the surface on one of the mining elevators that thankfully still worked. As the elevator rose above the surface it revealed a landscape that had been scoured by some massive unknown force, leaving behind trails of glassy black earth. On the mountainside, several large black edifices had been erected since West had last been here: shards of the Enemy web that had fallen to earth. He looked down into the valley and saw the scattered ruins of what had been Diablo. Most of the buildings had been flattened by the force of the shattered upload generator, but some of the heartier stone buildings had withstood the blast. They would search those buildings first.
Patra and West walked leisurely down the mountainside in the dark gray light of what should have been early evening. Neither knew why they were in Diablo, or what they were supposed to do next. West had a suspicion that they would not be the only people in Diablo before long. He suspected that the other Styx, if any remained, would come home before long. They would come to Diablo.
He would wait for them.
Desert. Somewhere.
Richter sat alone under the starless sky. He had not made a campfire. He did not need warmth or light. Oh, father, where have you taken my stars?
He had given up trying to remember the name of the song he had been whistling incessantly for days. He had given up whistling for the moment as well; his parched lips and dry mouth made his forays into the realm of music a near-impossibility for now. His mind was abuzz with his mental replacement for the mystery song; it replayed over and over again the theme song from the opening credits of “The A-Team.” He had always loved those ancient television shows as a kid. He had always fancied himself a younger and scrawnier version of Mr. T, with fewer gold chains and more hair.
I pity the fool…
Father, where are my friends the stars? You did not ask my permission before you slaughtered the innocents and threw their blood into the sky.
He attempted sleep, but as always, the unnecessary biological imperative eluded him. Instead, he laid on his back, looking into the frigid black desert sky. Never had he been in a place so cold and black. For all he knew, he could be floating in the void of space at that very moment, so dark was the world around him. He could be dead already.
You are dead already. You’ve been dead for centuries.
In the middle of a dead desert, a dead sky above, with only the grit of the desert ground beneath him to signal that he was indeed still a prisoner of gravity, he shut his eyes to shut out the black.
