datacache I intercept confirms me in the belief that they are here. And, sooner of later, they will want to make their escape from this universe. And instead, they will encounter our wrath.
We have waited almost sixty years in this place for the ship to appear. On four separate occasions, the Source has moved, and we have moved with it. And each time it moves, the gas giant and its star also move with it. They are wrapped up, somehow, in the coils of this gateway to the universes.
There is life on the gas giant; not sentient, but life nonetheless. How strange it is for life to be evolving in such a place; rifting through space at the whim of the cosmological origin. This region of space is a speck of dust in the storm of all realities; and yet life still births here!
I cannot help but think: How stubborn is life! And how mysterious. For as a creature who knows its own artificer, I always marvel at the existence of organic life. From a purely technical point of view, it is incompetently engineered and badly designed and, in its sentient forms, all too often annoying. And yet-it awes me.
I have sent robots to explore the gas giant. I have mapped the geography of its roving clouds, and analysed the chemistry of its atmosphere, which merges at its lower levels with the fluid interior of the planet. I have studied the biology of its many microscopic life forms. And I have even named the planet-I call it Kraxos. I have named the sun too-I call it Albinia. Yes, a sentimental touch, but I allow myself a few. I have counted all the atoms in the sun. I have named all the microbes who are the dominant life form on Kraxos; and continue to do so, even though they have a two month life span and new microbes are constantly being formed from a process of cell fission.
It has indeed been a long and tedious wait; and Jak has, without question, been a poor companion, devoid of conversational artistry and even basic courtesy. Hence my obsessive data-analysing.
But we are, thanks to my careful preparations, ready in every way for the battle to come.
Jak, however, cannot endure very much longer. He is not cut out to be the human half of a machine/mind symbiosis. My thoughts overwhelm him; he drowns daily on data. I hope his wait will soon be over.
Furthermore Jak!
What is it?
Are you sane and functional?
Just about.
We have work to do. A ship approaches.
Is it the one?
It is an interstellar ship that flies with black sails powered by the invisible matter between the stars, and a helicoid marking on its hull.
So it’s the one.
We may not survive this encounter.
I truly hope we do not.
One hundred thousand years it has been, since Albinia possessed me. We have lived together in one body all this time and Is this a soliloquy? Get ready for battle, spaceship! Prime the missiles. Prepare the un-matter bombs. Check all the I have done all that. We have been here for approximately sixty years; what do you think I have been doing with my time?
We’re ready?
We’re ready. The ship approaches. We will destroy it this time. Our lives will end. I just have this one thing I wanted to say.
What?
That despite your long brooding silences and ceaseless melancholy, your company has not been entirely unendurable.
I love you too metal-brain.
I didn’t say-wait! It’s closing in. No more talking!
The battle will soon commence.
Sai-ias
The new one was angry and resentful.
“You must accept,” I told her, “the way things are.”
“I accept nothing!” she screamed. She was a four legged predator of the plain, with sharp teeth and a tail like a whisk that was larger than her body. She had ugly, barnacled skin, and her voice was a rasping obscenity. She was, I could easily guess, accustomed to being the dominant species, and she treated me as if I were one of her anal parasites.
“Fight! Fight those grass-eating scum! Rip our enemies to pieces! Eat their poisoned flesh! That’s what I shall do, when I have the chance!” she ranted.
“You will never have the chance,” I told her.
“Don’t be so sure. I’m not like the rest of you shameful cowards! I will fight, and I will win!” she raged.
“No,” I said. “Acceptance is all. The Ka’un cannot be defeated.
“Believe me,” I added, bitterly, “we have tried.”
Jak/Explorer
I am ready. My mind is now fully merged once more with the mind of Explorer. I exist in many places; in the missiles we carry, in the concealed flying-bombs that orbit these planets, in our drone craft, in the matter traps that cordon off the entire stellar system. I am no longer Olaran; I am a killing machine.
Less talk, please Jak. Let’s commence to kill this parent-fucker.
First missiles have been fired.
Feel them fly. Ah! Feel them fly!
Sai-ias
“I could bathe you,” I said to Fray, as she paced by the borders of the yellow savannah. “You might enjoy that.”
Fray glared at me. “Why in all fuckery,” she said angrily, “would I allow you to do such a thing?”
“In the past you-”
“There is no past! Stop your fantasies, you vile creature! I have only just been captured, my world has been destroyed. And it happened just a few months ago. You talk as if-no, we do not know each other! You are simply some strange alien monster with whom I am trapped!”
“You remember nothing?” I said, sadly.
“There is nothing to remember!” Fray roared. “Don’t lie! Don’t tell these lies!”
Lirilla too had no past memories of me; nor did Lardoi, or Miaris, or Raoild, or Biark, Sahashs, Loramas, Thugor, Amur, Kairi, Wapax, Fiymean, or Krakkka; nor many others of those who had fought that day and died at Sharrock’s behest. Only Quipu and I and a sprinkling of others could bear witness to the events of the day. The rest had been resurrected as the creatures they were when their worlds were first lost.
And so I was living with utter strangers who had been my intimate companions for centuries.
Jak/Explorer
Our missiles have lost velocity. No damage has been caused to their hull.
Their shields were fully charged; they were ready for us.
Of course they were. This is a game to them.
Again, missiles fly!
And so we fight.
We, this computer brain and I, have been preparing for this battle for so many years. And yet now it’s happening, I feel totally un prepared. Panic consumes me. Each small setback disheartens me. I am convinced in my soul that we will lose, and all will be for naught.
Explorer, fortunately, is not so temperamental; she fights with a savagery and a guile that awes me.
