Ex Lacrima Remnant
Track #67 – Somewhere in Time
“So, how are you feeling?”
“It stings.”
“It’ll get better, don’t worry.”
No, it won’t.
His second brain didn’t seem of the same opinion. Yet, his second brain had only one role – dispatching the orders coming from the first brain to the rest of his body. Whatever that pitiful mass of gray matter whispered, it wasn’t something he had to take care of. He could simply ignore it. Still, that clump of neurons was also connected to his new recorder, which meant that it was going to contain not one but two minds stashed together. He groaned.
“Was it necessary, Castillo?”
“Yup.”
The red eyes blinked on that expressionless white mask. Castillo had a mark under her left eye, a small crack caused by an accidental fall, one that she didn’t want to fix. That made Castillo ‘Castillo’. He could appreciate that. Distinguishing each other wasn’t a chore, after such a long time spent together. The movements of one’s wires, of the second pair of legs, of the tail even. That was enough to recognize who was who. Which was reassuring – nobody wanted to cross Captain Xaviella Zagarias Rubico and not know who she was.
He felt something stinging again, at the base of his neck. A pungent sensation, as if he had an extraneous body there, sapping away his energies. The crystal, of course. That bloody crystal that the Captain wanted everyone to have. Castillo’s gaze lingered on him, as her speakers started to transmit her voice one more time.
“This cycle was good, they invented a lot of useful stuff. I miss them already.”
So, they reaped the benefits of such an industrious civilization, as they always did. Castillo didn’t seem really happy about it, though. He had half an idea why – she rooted for them. She rooted for that iteration to kill the swarm. Instead, they gave up. Committed mass suicide.
Only their creatures, those green-haired things, kept fighting till the very end, till the very last one of them died. He felt bad for them. Everything was lost, but they struggled – they tried to resist till the very last day. Some of them might still have been alive, somewhere in space. Once they had confirmation the last settlement was deleted, they simply switched off the machines, as a gesture of mercy, acknowledging the dignity of the fallen enemy. The Captain wasn’t aware of that insubordination – Castillo had been careful about keeping that secret. Yet, it was inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. One, two survivors didn’t mean a lot, especially not when a new cycle would have lasted for a thousand years or more.
He slowly started to feel more comfortable with that extension of his mind.
No, you don’t.
His secondary brain was adamant in refusing the newcomer, though. Castillo waved her manipulators in front of him, blinked her eyes.
“You were the last, today. If you’re done, we should probably get to the cold sleep pods. Lagash is going to switch us off in forty-eight hours… as usual.”
“Right, right,” he said, “jeez, this ship is stingy, ain’t it? But why did the Captain order you to install these… crystals inside all of us?”
“Information safety. For all codes, passwords and the likes, so that everything – and I mean everything is recorded. After Volgers went out, we spent a whole week resetting credentials.”
Volgers. He really wanted this humanity or their spawn to survive. To the point of throwing himself out of Lagash, so that those elves could harvest his body. In hindsight, there had been signs that he was out of himself. Tired. Dejected. After witnessing humanity being reset three times, he couldn’t stand a fourth one. So, he did what none of them should have done.
He ran out of the seedship.
And was deactivated on the spot.
Dying one minute after setting his foot out of it.
The crystal, though, wouldn’t have helped in that case. It’s stupid.
His second brain vocalized what he really thought about it. Paranoia. A false sense of safety. Maybe, Captain Rubico was losing it too. After all, thousands of years of travel, plus four full cycles? An eternity, one that they had to share with their dumb secondary brains too. It was a foreign concept, alien even, but one brain alone wasn’t enough to steer the massive frames that encased and replaced their flesh. No way their squishy human bodies would have survived that long. Still, that also meant that they were hitting psychological issues that none on Earth would have ever predicted. That was what living that long caused. Thus, not only Captain Rubico forced those crystals on everyone – she actively wanted every member of the crew to rotate around positions and tasks, so that each crystal could contain a full set of operating instructions. Paranoia. Plain and simple.
“Ding-dong, McAllison, time to get sleepy!”
Castillo pushed his head down, patted his neck armor.
“Bummer. The usual?”
“Eight hundred years, yes.”
“Just in time to harness the discoveries of the new cycle, huh.”
“If they survive that long.”
“Come on, the first cycle was just a dud! It ain’t gonna go like that again!”
Castillo rolled her manipulators, her eyes blinked in and out.
“God, don’t tell me. Wasn’t it funny to restore a radiation-soaked wasteland to livable conditions? Come on – we almost lost the planet! What did that Australian imbecile think, when he decided that actually, giving them nuclear weapons is fine? I wish we had more controls on the vaults.”
“You say this every time.”
“After four thousand frogging years, you run out of new topics pretty soon.”
“Fair.”
Castillo blinked one more time, turned her head around.
“Now, please, go to your sleep pod. I still need to check in with the Captain. I’ll be there when we wake up, alright?”
“Alr…”
———- - - ——— ———- - - ——— ———- - - ———
A burst of new pictures, a burst of memories untold. The crystal glowed, burned, while Robin was in a coma-like state. All of her skin flowed too. The lines multiplied, spread, blinked in and out of existence in different moments. Sweat accumulated over her forehead. Her breathing was ragged.
———- - - ——— ———- - - ——— ———- - - ———
“A suicide bomber?”
A control room, surrounded by pods, opening one by one. A white face looming over his, watching it with unblinking red eyes. Said face twitched, the fingers pointed at the other side of the room.
“Yeah. In the corridor from the flight deck to the weapon control system. We have some damaged camera feed saved on a memory crystal.”
“…who did that?”
“…”
“It was one of those… elves?”
“Seems like it.”
“But how…?”
“We missed some of them and they retaliated. The last of them detonated themselves up inside the ship. We have a water loss there and, like, a lot of system errors.”
He frowned, thought about Castillo. It was her fault, of course. She was too soft. Still, if the Captain ever accessed his memory crystal…
You would be screwed too, because you knew.
Thanks, second brain.
Fortunately, he surmised, the situation couldn’t be that dire. So, he retorted, tried to keep some of that optimism flowing.
“We still have some two centuries to fix it, right? Can’t be that problematic.”
“Nah, Captain Rubico says we’re gonna leave it like that as… a reminder.”
“A reminder?”
“That we screwed up. A reminder that we need to be more thorough. That we can’t get feelings to drive our actions, if we want to…”
He rolled his mechanical eyes, growled.
“Humanity live forever yadda yadda. Yes, I get it, Bolset, I get it. But tell me… is this really living?”
“Pardon?”
“These humans we unleash on this godforsaken planet… they keep looping from the beginning over and over and over because of…”
“Look, we talked about this… how many times?”
“Three thousand five hundred seventy-seven.”
“Precisely. My answer isn’t gonna change. We are here to do our job and prevent humanity from destroying itself before we destroy it. The cycle makes sure they can’t surpass our tech. It’s what Captain Rubico said, remember?”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t make sense, right?”
Bolset shrugged with all of his legs.
“At some point, it will.”
“I’m not su…”
———- - - ——— ———- - - ——— ———- - - ———
Robin spat blood, coughed, her fever worsened. She curled, writhed, her eyes burned, tears flowed out of them, poured like rain. The connectors overheated, steam formed close to the socket. Her whole body twisted, twitched, before she closed her eyes again, before she dove into those memories one more time.
———- - - ——— ———- - - ——— ———- - - ———
“I don’t like this cycle, McAllison.”
Castillo, again, tending to the weapon system, pushing buttons almost at random, sighing with her neck connected to the control panel. More material for the memory crystal. More crud to fill it.
“How so?”
“These new humans are barbaric. Almost third cycle style.”
“Odd cycles are cursed, huh.”
“You can say it out loud. First, third, fifth. A mess. The second and the fourth were so much better.”
“What if we release the swarm now and we start again?”
Castillo shrugged with all of her appendages, started messing with the controls.
“One thousand years. That’s how much time they have. That’s what Anthony Yarramundi wanted.”
“That geezer again.”
“You don’t like him?”
“Who does?”
“…I did. Once. Well, before the incident with the nukes. I think he had the right idea.”
“Well, more power to you, then. But he was an idiot. Idiot he and all of his cronies. I regret signing in for Lagash.”
“You say that every time.”
“This doesn’t make it less true.”
“Okay, but then…”
She remained silent for a second, before turning around to face him.
“…do you regret not getting killed by those alien machines? Because I’m pretty sure you enlisted to survive a little longer – much like I did.”
That was an armor-piercing question, if he ever heard one. Yet, he went through the motions of answering that so many times that it didn’t surprise him any longer.
“No, I don’t regret being alive. Or… well, maybe I do.”
“Wow, that’s pretty deep.”
“What I mean is… when was the last time we experienced something, anything new? We lived… for how many centuries, already?”
“That’s to say you’re tired.”
“…maybe.”
“Don’t worry, I’m tired too. I don’t want to see… all of this destruction again. Four times was enough.”
He twitched, closed in on her.
“What do you plan to do? Not something as stupid as leaving some of them alive again, right?”
Castillo averted her gaze, turned back to the weapon control system.
“No, the Captain would release the swarm immediately, if I did. That’s… too much.”
Castillo winked at him by switching off one of her eyes and switching it on back in an instant, turned her expressionless face around.
“But don’t worry: I’ve made my decision.”
He groaned, shook his head.
“Better not regret it, okay?”
“I won’t. Can you trust me once, McAllison?”
“Duh, of course.”
Of course not.
Thank you, secondary brain. Much appreciated.
Castillo nodded, waved her manipulator at him.
“You don’t need to stay here, right? You have already memorized all the patterns.”
“But I like watching you.”
“Oh, please. These bodies aren’t made for sex, you know, right?”
“…what if we connected our minds instead?”
Castillo jolted. A second of silence fell among them. Before she started talking.
“I don’t want you to… read me. There’s… things that you shouldn’t peek i…”
———- - - ——— ———- - - ——— ———- - - ———
Robin shivered, trembled. Her whole body was shaken, her muscles dominated by cramps. Fever. Hot. Fever. Her forehead was burning. Too much information. Too much information. Too much information. Too much information. Too much
———- - - ——— ———- - - ——— ———- - - ———
He was in a state of shock.
Emptiness.
Emptiness all inside him
All outside of him.
“McAllison? Come on, McAllison, Captain Rubico wants to…”
“Bolset.”
His voice had lost its tone. Had lost its color. His eyes were switched off, darkened. They had sacrificed the ability to shed tears centuries before, when their body were replaced with whatever was sustaining their existence. Yet, he felt the urge to cry. The urge to let it go.
“McAllison, you shouldn’t…”
“Shut. The fuck. Up.”
They were together, Bolset and he, close to the furnace. Antoine Bolset didn’t have any distinctive signature, unlike Castillo, but he walked in a very specific way, one that nobody else was able to replicate. Also, he had a French accent. The Frenchest French accent he ever heard. Normally, that would have been useless trivia, but, in that moment, focusing on it was the hook that kept him sane.
Sane?
Was he ever
sane
in the first place?
Stranded on a distant planet.
Far from everyone he loved.
For what felt
no, for what was an eternity.
With a second brain attached to his.
In a body that wasn’t his.
What was left
of Scott McAllison?
Was Scott McAllison still alive?
And, if ScottMcAllison was still alive.
Why was he
throwing Lara Castillo’s dead black frame
Overload! Overload! Overload!
her white featureless face
Overload! Overload! Overload!
into the furnace?
Overload! Overload! Overload!
He didn’t know.
He couldn’t know.
The truth was that Lara Castillo.
Had committed suicide.
By smashing her own core.
She left a note. Planned it since the end of her last cycle.
Got done with it as soon as her whole experience, as her whole skillset was recorded in her crystal. The crystal. That one was what gave her the courage to do it.
With her memories in the crystal, she wasn’t needed anymore.
Anyone could do her job.
Anyone could take her place.
But no one was Lara Castillo.
Except her.
He felt empty.
Angry.
Empty.
Without her.
His anchor of sanity.
Empty.
He would.
Empty.
He would.
Empty
He would would would would would would would wouldwouldwouldwouldwould
———- - - ——— ———- - - ——— ———- - - ———
The plug on Robin’s neck sparked, triggering an emergency release. Her eyes burst wide open, her pupils shrank to dots, her mouth fell agape. Blood dripped from it, as her teeth bit her tongue, as her breath lost every regularity. The data bands on her skin flashed, darkened, flashed again. Before switching off, all together. Warmth.
She felt warmth around her.
Kryzalid.
Kryzalid was hugging her.
“Robbie… Robbie, it’s okay, Robbie. It’s okay. It’s over. It’s over…”
Her whole body burned. All of her muscles ached. So many years. So many memories. More than three hundred years of remembrance shoved down her brain in five minutes. The cycles. The creatures. The mourning. The pain. The system. That didn’t make sense.
That didn’t make sense at all.
She coughed. Coughed again. Blood. Her skin was scorching hot. Her organs felt like to the point of rupturing. Her head split by a horrible headache. Her gem flickered at irregular intervals, much like a damaged neon light. That was something she wasn’t ready for. That was everything except what she expected.
Humans.
From another time.
Messing with them.
Playing with their lives.
With the lives of the new inhabitants of Lagash.
With the lives of the crew, trapped on that vessel for eternity.
And…
And…
She puked.
All the content of her stomach, she threw it up on the spot. Her bile, mixed with blood, flowed into the water, poured into it, just as Kryzalid helped her stand up, as the soldiers gave back her clothes. She sat down in another corner, looked at them, looked at the faces surrounding her, wiped her mouth.
“…I know, now.”
Her eyes sparked with resolve, her tiredness, her pain losing center stage.
“I know what I have to do.”