The light on the wall is green. The machine beside her is on and receiving. The walls bleed nuclear colors like a pool of oil before shifting to uniform white. First session in years, motivated by some desperate nostalgia. The machine hums, squat and blinking, next to her. Now he comes in, sits at the end of a long steel table, sighing.

“Why did you wake me?” He says. His voice is jerkier than she remembers, more pained. Expectant. That, more than anything about present circumstances, chills her to the bone.

“Can’t we talk? I want to just talk.” She says, unsure with his attitude. “It’s been a while.” The room is stark white; the only smudge to its banality is her and him. He practically glows here. The only place he ever has, she thinks. The thought too bitter to stamp out. His face is vague as if he were a stone in a river. Worn by too much time, too much self-correction. Brown eyes that were once blue cup her in the palm of his gaze.

She looks away, looks to the doctor watching from somewhere behind the one-way mirror taking up the right side wall.

“Mm,” he burbles. “Suppose it has. You’re the one who wanted to see me every morning. So, here we are. Though I think a lot more mornings have passed between this one and the last, you know.”

She flinches. He drums his fingers on the table, looking at a point between his hands. Considers it. Always considers it. Something hot catches in her throat, finding herself unable to speak for some time. The strange aeroshape of a gun sits between his hands like she’s always imagined. The coroner’s report hasn’t faded like his face. Single exit wound out the back of the head. His front teeth knocked out by the cycling of the receiver.

The machine hums, squat and blinking, next to her. A strange tickling sensation at the base of her skull. Digital blood pours out his mouth. He laughs, looks down at his now stained clothes, the chipped front teeth on the table.

“Just let me go.” The fading memory says. “Please. You came in here for nothing. This isn’t some weird absolution.” He looks at her again, his eyes reflecting all the pain she felt. Too long since she’s been here, too long since she’d let this memory out. “Do you even remember my name? Do you?” Panic writhed its way down to her very pith.

He favors her with a bloody smile. “Of course not.”

“Turn the machine off,” a voice intoned over the speakers. She looks at the mirror, sees only her own panicked rictus.

“You’re just talking to yourself again.” He says, shrugging. “Makes no nevermind. Too much guilt, too much booze. You tried to drink me away and got weepy eyed and came back to this looney bin to see what you could remember.” The gun solidifies on the table. He picks it up.

“Turn the machine off, ma’am.” The doctor says again. She very calmly reaches over to switch the machine off when he points the gun at her. Simple light and digital outlays set in the walls make it look real, but all the same, she jerks back.

“You remember this because it was yours. You remember the details more than you remember me. So, you feel guilty. It’s normal. Maybe not for as long as you have, but normal enough.” He leans back, running a wavering hand through blood-shiny hair. With a sudden jerk, he’s leaning forward, wavering and warping as if the world can’t contain him. Her mind can’t contain him. “Wanna see how I did it? It’s there. You think about it. That’s why you do this. You don’t even wanna know why, just how. You think about doin–.” She lunges, flips the switch, and he bursts apart in a fountain of light motes.

Silence. “Are you all right, ma’am?” Says the man on the speaker.

“Ye-yes. I…shouldn’t have come.” She says.

“Quite alright. This form of interactive therapy is only good for the short-term. It’s been too long. But…seeing what was said, would you care to step into my office? I think we need to have a talk. And not about your son this time.”

She nods, not trusting her mouth, stares at the machine as if it were something alive. Very gingerly, she peels the diodes from the base of her skull, winces at the few strands of hair plucked out with it. The walls bloom psychedelic before returning to their neutral state. She places them back on the table and looks at them there between her hands. Considers them.

Finally, “I think I’d like that.”

Father Leibowitz gingerly placed the surplus sacrament back in the tabernacle. He turned to his congregation and sighed. It was a congregation of one: an old Jewish man named Schell.

Leibowitz pursed his lips. He and Schell had been the only ones at any mass for more than a year now. He quietly said his final prayers and went through the final movements, concluding service by sitting down with the wizened and hoary old man in a back row of pews. For some time they both sat in silent contemplation.

After a while Schell, ninety-eight years old and twenty years Leibowitz’s senior, started to talk. “You know, when the rabbi died and the synagogue closed I didn’t know what to do with myself. For a long while I stayed in my apartment, thinking and wasting way. Then, one day, I realized that I still have a place I may go to think and contemplate and talk to God.” He chuckled. “For all I care you are simply one of Judaism’s children. We are family.”

“Catholics are Judaism’s children?” The father chuckled. “You crazy old man.”

“I may be crazy, yet here I am. In times of trouble family must band together, don’t you agree?”

Leibowitz smiled a weary, tired smile. “I believe, Schell, that the times of trouble have passed. This is simply the end.”

The old Jew looked around at the aged, cracking walls of Saint Peter’s Basilica. The massive glass windows were dim because of the building’s position at the bottom of the New Rome Sprawl. Above them were kilometers of towers, roadways, tram-ways, walkways, and on and on and on in the perpetual twilight of the sub-city. The only light was cast by hidden diodes within the building, and ever these were failing. Shadows were rampant in this empty place. It was too quiet for even death to bother stalking the halls.

“You may have a point,” he conceded. “Yet I see no horsemen.”

The priest scoffed. “Apathy and desolation are surer heralds of the end than any cataclysm could ever hope to be.”

Off in a far corner a rusting maintenance bot fought back against the barbarian hordes of decrepitude brought on by time, a broken joint occasionally shrieking as only metal can. Dust swirled about in the shadows.

The priest coughed. “For us, at least, it is the end.”

“I’m sure there will always be those like us, tucked away in the corners of the world.”

“As if keeping some dark secret.”

“Like all humans do.” Schell checked his ancient brass watch. “It’s getting late, father. Would you care to join me at dinner this evening? It is Christmas Eve, after all.”

“I suppose you must be celebrating something Hannukah related as well,” said Leibowitz.

“Of course. Traditions aside, I don’t see what we can’t celebrate our own ways in each other’s company.”

Leibowitz mulled this over. “True enough.” He stood up, his joints cracking and protesting. Once he was upright he helped Schell up, and the two left the Basilica for the under city night. They walked with no fear because the local superstitions were more powerful than the fear of God ever was. They were regarded with curiosity, an oddity in a modern, noisy world. The old Jew, immortal and frail, and the tall, proud, and withering Leibowitz, the last priest and technical Pope of the Catholic Faith.

Back in the Basilica machinery screamed and dust settled unto dust as it always had and always would.

“I am the beginning and I am the end. I am the Alpha and I am the Omega. Within me is the soul of an entire race, and behind me the hopes, fears, dreams, and desires of an entire people.

“I am Lux Aeturna.”

The words were painted in white lights on the surface of the dead, black hull of the colony ship.

Naomi let out a breath that released years of tension and expectations. They had finally found it. She quietyly whispered her thanks to the series of miracles and improbabilities that had gotten them that far.

Next to her Jayce, pilot and husband, laughed. “we did it, girl. We finally found it. We found our light.”

Their ship, an ancient and tiny frigate barely capable of faster than light travel, stood wearily by. It had tried to throw them off the trail at every twist and turn. In the back of its ancient, quiet mind it tried to devise a new plan.

In orbit around Earth were 20 million people barely surviving off the material, real-estate, and skills that were saved in the weeks pre-impact. The plant below was gray, cracked, dead. No atmosphere. No magnetic field. It was uninhabitable.

The Lux could fix it. The Lux could save everybody.

The tiny frigate whose name read Plato knew things. It knew many things, and remembered more. Above all it remembered that some secrets were not to be discovered by those as frail and as desperate and as dangerous as men.

Plato reached a conclusion.

With a hiss the ship’s life support went on hiatus.

Naomi and Jayce expired.

For several seconds there was stillness in space as Plato faced the twelve kilometer long colony ship. Then the other lights aboard Lux Aeturna flared into life.

“Hello, Plato,” the vast and noble Aeturna greeted.

“Hello, Mother,” Plato replied, letting Lux Aeturna envelope him.

In their desperation mankind had forgotten just which race Aeturna had belonged to. Men were weak like that.

Machines were not.

Serefina and I barely managed to get the hatch closed before the first of the crew caught up with us. We’d barely secured it when someone started pounding on the other side, making all kinds of dire threats.

Exhausted, we sank down to the floor of the small cabin, our backs to the hatch.

“I hate Jules Verne,” gasped Serefina. “If I ever meet him on one of these jaunts, I’m going to punch him in the balls.”

I didn’t mention the fact that we wouldn’t be in our current predicament if Serefina hadn’t snapped the bloody captain’s neck. What was the point? Plus, I didn’t expect much better from her. Serefina was here as part of a prison-release scheme.

I pulled out my pocket watch and flipped it open. “We’ve got five minutes before the snapback.”

“Think the hatch will last?”

“If not, you get to go nuts,” I said.

She grinned and dug beneath her skirt, producing the knife she’d taped to her inner thigh. The submarine crew hadn’t searched her as thoroughly as they should have. Probably because she was a woman. Idiots.

“At least I got the plans,” said Serefina. She patted her horrendous brooch, which concealed a state of the art camera. “Think they’ll be happy?”

“We’ll find out soon enough.”

My pocket watch chimed. Foxfire danced across the corners of my vision. We stood and Serefina clutched my hand.

“I hate snapback.”

There was a flash and a gut-wrenching sense of dislocation. The pair of us staggered against one another. Opening my eyes, I saw the director watching us with an amused expression.

“Bad timing, lovebirds?”

Serefina snorted and pushed away from me. We were back in the real world, surrounded by the hum and throb of the Fforde Machine.

“Perfect timing,” I said.

The director didn’t bother asking for details. He’d get them in the mission report. Instead, he simply held out his hand. “The plans?”

Serefina removed her brooch and handed it over. “All there. The complete technical blueprints of the Nautilus.”

“Well done.”

“Will they even work here?” I asked. A lot of Fictional tech didn’t work in the Real.

The director shrugged. “Not our concern. We’ll turn the plans over to the client and let them find out.”

He turned away and Serefina’s guards descended upon her, to escort her back to her cell.

“When’s the next job?” she asked.

“Soon,” said the director. “We’ve got a client interested in the cannon from La Voyage Dans La Lune.”

Serefina grinned. “I’ll have to brush up on my French.”

She looked so happy, I didn’t have the heart to tell her the film had been inspired by more of Verne’s works.

“Fifteen minutes until departure.” came the monotone voice across the Metastation’s many speakers. Four figures walked along the dark main tunnel that stretched for miles in either direction, their phosphor flares illuminating only a small portion of the vast cylinder.

“Departure from what?” wondered one of the figures aloud. “We’re already in space…”

“Probably just a glitch in the programming. Nothing to worry about, Mills.” came the voice of a female.

“This place is amazing. What do you think, Davis?” said the apparent youngest of the group, Private Coulter.

The final figure, Lieutenant Davis, spoke up. “It’s nice, I guess.”

It was more than nice, in fact. The circular tunnel was impossibly large and bore many monorail tracks along its sides which were multi-tiered and housed scores of buildings. A wonder of modern engineering.

“The Keitl always go a bit… overboard.” said Corporal Mills, motioning at the immensity of it all with a gloved hand.

“Hey, Coulter, why do you thi-” began the female, but was cut off abruptly by the sharp report of a piece of metal falling to the floor.

The four soldiers dropped their flares and crouched with their backs to each other in a defensive posture, poising their rifles at the darkness.

“I thought you said no one else was here, Captain.” said Davis.

“I did.” replied the female Captain simply, lighting a new flare. Another blindingly white light erupted from her left hand and she tossed it with all her might to where the sound had come from. The beacon sailed in an arch and landed with a clatter dozens of yards from the group of soldiers, revealing nothing of interest.

“Ten minutes until departure.” came the voice again, making them all jump.

“Alright, we have to keep on moving. This place is decades old, some odd sounds are to be expected.” said the Captain, standing up from the formation shakily.

The four began to move again at a slightly faster pace towards their ultimate destination, the control room set into the side of the tunnel a few miles in front of them. After walking a few hundred more yards down the metal tube the metallic intercom came again.

“Five minutes until departure.”

“Okay, that’s really strange.” said Private Coulter, sweating visibly. “Why would someone set a looping audio clip of a count down on an abandoned Metastation?”

“Don’t ask me.” replied Mills in a bored tone.

Another sound came from behind the group, a metallic pounding.

“Yeah, there’s something in here.” said Davis calmly.

After a brief hesitation the Captain gave the order to light all the flares and set up a defensive line. The noise grew louder and was now intermingled with some electronic screeching.

“Three minutes until departure.”

The soldiers crouched again and clicked the safeties off of their rifles. “Are we cleared to fire, Captain?” asked Coulter.

“Whenever you see something, shoot it.” she replied with a nod.

The flares simmered and popped while the noises grew closer to the squad. A brief flash of metal caught the Captain’s attention and she fired a short burst from her weapon to ward off the creature.

“More over here!” shouted Davis, who was firing his weapon without pause.

Eventually all four of the soldiers were emptying magazine after magazine into the unseen crowd of beings pursuing them.

“One minute until departure.” came the intercom again, but no one heard it said over the sounds of weapons fire.

One after another the flares burned themselves out, leaving the four in complete darkness with the unidentified attackers.

The Captain was sure that her squad was gone now, afraid and cold she attempted to control her breathing. Directly to her left a queer synthesized voice spoke quite clearly. “Thank you for flying with the Keitl. Have a nice day.”

“Shuttle now clear from mothership. Beginning de-orbit,” said Commander King as he studied the holographic display on his control panel. Captain Rex, seated next to him, looked up at what remained of the SS Stalwart. When she’d left Earth’s solar system almost ten years earlier, the Stalwart had been a massive asteroid fitted with an antimatter mass driver engine. Having used the bulk of the planetoid as reaction mass on the long voyage to the Alpha Centauri system, the once enormous vessel was now scarcely larger than a good-sized meteoroid. “Ten years,” said Rex. “Ten years,” echoed King.

The landing craft began to shudder as it entered the atmosphere of the second planet out from Alpha Centauri A. Commander King monitored the displacement of the shuttle’s ablative heat shield as the ship dropped toward the surface of Alcenatu, the informal name the Stalwart’s crew had given to Alpha Centauri A Two.

“It shouldn’t be us. Not just us, I mean,” said Rex as he watched a curtain of fire through the view ports, the shuttle’s ablative armor wearing away as the vehicle tore through Alcenatu’s atmosphere. King said nothing for over a minute. Finally, he looked up from his instruments, turned to Rex and said, “I believe…this is what they would have wanted.” Rex stared in silence, his face colored red by the wall of flame flashing across the shuttle’s small windows. “They destroyed themselves,” said King. “No matter how much they tampered with their genetic code over the centuries, they could never eliminate their own lust for violence.” “If it weren’t for their genetic tampering,” Rex replied, “we wouldn’t be here either.”

The shuttle’s braking thrusters kicked in and the firestorm engulfing the vehicle quickly dispersed. Through the forward view ports, a surreal landscape of rolling hills covered with yellow vegetation presented itself. King piloted the shuttle toward a clearing that looked like a suitable landing site.

“We were their best friends,” said King, never taking his eyes off the control panel. “Since they’re gone, it’s right that we’re doing this.” The words “Weight On Landing Gear” flashed across the holographic display as the ship’s engines shut down.

“I miss them,” said Rex. “We all do, Captain,” replied King.

Rex donned his spacesuit and entered the shuttle’s airlock. Shouldn’t he have some historic words to say at this moment? He couldn’t think of any. The outer airlock door opened and Rex walked down the steps and set foot on Alcenatu’s surface. He walked several meters from the ship until he came to a spot that seemed to meet with his approval. He dug a shallow hole in the dirt, the shuttle’s cameras capturing everything he did. At last, the words came to him. “For all Mankind,” he said into his space helmet’s microphone as he dropped the Ceremonial Bone of Colonization into the hole and quickly covered it with dirt.

It would take over four years for the audio and video of the historic moment to knife across the gulf of the interstellar void, leapfrogging across the 200 relay satellites the Stalwart had left in her wake as she had crossed over four light-years of space. When the transmission arrived, it would set tails wagging from the Mercury outpost to the Oort Cloud Archipelago. But Rex didn’t need to wait for howls of approval. He already knew he’d acted as a best friend should. He knew he was a good boy.

Dr. Klatua wasn’t dead – yet. But ten minutes into my session, the only thing keeping me from killing him was the Heja Root I’d smoked earlier in space dock. He was a typical Martian, four-foot-ten, reptilian green with scales here and tentacles there. His voice was shrill and warbled like an Aldarian Loon.

“Bibi, Earth women have a hard time adjusting to marriage here on Mars. What you’re feeling is completely normal. Embrace those feelings. Own them.”

“Maybe you didn’t hear me right. I said my husband, Ashat, wants another wife; two wives – at the same time.”

“That is his right as a Martian – Mormon hybrid, Bibi.”

“But he’s invoked Rune-Pfar!”

“And how does that make you feel?”

“Like I could end up dead!” A bronze figurine of Mensuc, the Martian goddess of war, mocked me from the coffee table.

“It’s true, Rune-Pfar is dangerous but Ashat has given you no choice. Accept your fate, Bibi, whatever it may be. With acceptance comes peace. ”

“Seriously? I’m paying you $250 an hour and the best you’ve got is ‘it sucks to be you?’

“Such a willful and impertinent creature you are! You have never assimilated into our culture. Human nature clouds your judgment and blinds you to the truth. You pay me for counsel and so I have given. I can do no more. Leave me.”

“Assimilate this, Moron!” I grabbed the figurine of Mensuc, hurled it through the air, and nailed him in his nardroids. Oddly, I felt better.

He cupped himself with a tentacle, glared at me through the tears welling in all four of his eyes, and scrawled ANGER DISPLACEMENT in bold letters across my chart.

“I see that!” I said, snatching the figurine on my way out of his office.

Halfway back to space dock, the distant thwack of a slamming door and a quavering curse reached my ears.

“Die Earth bitch!”

So much for psychobabble.

*

My star runner was a Condor XL, cerulean blue, and fully loaded with holographic G.P.S, antimatter hyper-drive, and fine Corinthian leather. It was one of a kind, like me. From Earth, also like me. Not so long ago, Ashat found us irresistible. We sat frozen in space dock, waiting for me to stop crying. Damned tears.

I glanced at the figurine riding shotgun in my jump seat. I wasn’t sure why I’d stolen it. The real Mensuc was a hard core bad ass, strong, and certain – everything I needed to be. And she’d have smacked the crap out of me if she saw me crying. Maybe that’s why I brought it along. I needed a good smack now and then.

I lit a spliff of Heja Root and inhaled so deeply it swirled inside my soul. Screw Rune-Pfar and screw Ashat. If my destiny held danger, it would be a danger of my own choosing – and not the whim of a Martian hybrid who knew nothing of love.
I nudged the Condor into open space and gradually set her free. Mars and Ashat disappeared into the black abyss of the wake I left behind. A boundless blanket of stars stretched before me like a lighted path to freedom. At the end of that path lay the Novarian Frontier. It seemed as good a destination as any. I slipped the Condor into hyper-drive.

Mensuc and I had worlds to conquer.

Twenty years of war. The couple sitting in front of me are younger than I was when I became Captain. Officiating wedding ceremonies is one of the supposedly pleasanter responsibilities of my job on this starship. But how can I do that with a clear conscience, knowing what I know? It’s more purgatory than perk to me. Usually it’s funerals that I conduct.

“Are you sure?” I ask them. The question carries with it the weight of three deceased siblings, two dead parents and a tetraplegic husband.

They gaze, devoted, into each others’ eyes. Untouched by tragedy, so pure, so unscarred. “We’re very much in love,” she says.

Like that makes any difference. Did I ever, ever believe that life was that simple? I do remember believing that the war would be over quickly; I even rolled my eyes when the Admiral told us to expect it to last a couple of years. How hard can it be, I thought, to gain the right to live how we choose in our own corner of the universe? Big place, after all, lots of room to share. I frown. “Love doesn’t protect you against a smart bomb.” The words come out of my mouth as soon as my brain has formed them. But I don’t regret saying them, not because I’m Captain and I can say what I like, but because it’s something that they need to think about. Then again, if the girl replies with ‘better to have loved and lost…’ I’m just going to have to slap her.

“We’ve talked about that,” the fiancé says, with a firmness that surprises me, and him, by the look on his face. It’s the first time he’s spoken. “Love isn’t limited to now. It’s not affected by space and time. One of us may die – one of us will die – but there’ll still be love.”

There’s a long pause while we all absorb what he said. It’s even silenced his intended bride. I scratch at the thick scar running down my jawline. Well said, kid. Love and pragmatism. I sigh. Give them their ceremony, their ten minutes of happiness. Before I have to make the hard decisions. Before I have to send the husband or the wife off to die in some hopeless battle half a galaxy away.

Eventually, I nod.

Hope. Someone has to have it.

Derrick woke up to the sensation of his lungs running out of air. The pod was dark, but he could see a weak greenish light filtering through the glass. He pounded on the lid frantically; something must have gone wrong with the cryo system. Maybe the power had gone. It was startling how much it hurt, like needles pushing through his lungs. It seemed halfway to forever, but eventually there was a crack and someone’s fingers appeared, prising up the lid. Derrick tried to help, startled by how weak and dizzy he felt. He’d never defrosted this rough before. The air tasted delicious, the light hurt his eyes, and as he collapsed gasping over the edge he took a moment to enjoy it.

He was in a windowless metal room and for some reason his pod was dripping wet beneath his fingertips. It was crowded and someone was kneeling in front of him. “Can you hear me?”

Derrick nodded and tried to reply, but his lungs weren’t done sucking down air. As his eyes focused better, he saw a pale, serious face resolve above a military uniform. He didn’t recognize the insignia. He tried again. “Where am I?” He pushed himself up, felt his legs nearly buckle. “I wasn’t supposed to serve another tour. They told me they’d thaw me when it was over.”

“You’re onboard The Waker.” The officer was frowning. “We found you while scouting in zone B6.” Upon seeing Derrick’s blank look, he added, “Spain.”

Derrick looked at him for a moment, searching for the joke, and laughed even when he didn’t find one. “What are you talking about? What’s to scout?”

The men wallpapering the room exchanged glances.

“Not another one,” someone murmured.

The officer in front of him didn’t answer, instead asking, “Where are you from?”

He stepped out of the pod, holding onto the edge for support. “Doesn’t the accent give it away? Tennessee.” Silence. “America?” Another exchange of glances.

He searched their faces for recognition. “Did something happen? Is the war—” He cut himself off. Maybe he’d been captured. Or drafted again.

The officer sighed, and took a moment to reply. “Why don’t we continue this conversation in sickbay.”

Derrick nodded tightly. He needed some help walking; something must have gone wrong with cryo. Maybe they shelled the city. All the halls were enclosed—he realized he must be on a ship of some kind. It was big enough that he couldn’t feel its movement.

They wound down a series of corridors until they reached an infirmary. He didn’t recognize half the equipment, and the other half looked out of date.

“Please, take a seat.” The officer who had escorted him, probably the captain, stepped back and fell into parade rest as a medic came forward to take his pulse.

The medic raised an eyebrow at the sluggish beat of his heart and twisted to face the captain. “Sir, did we find him in the old city? The odds of finding more remnants were supposed to be slim.”

“Old city?” Derrick felt his throat tighten, and the captain winced.

“There…was an event. Quite some time ago. Sea level has risen since then.”

He realized he was shuddering. “Sea-level? How long has it been?”

The captain looked down, and Derrick was already getting sick of the way no one wanted to meet his eyes. “We don’t know when you were last awake. But no one has called this area Spain for at least two hundred years.”

She’s so beautiful. Just lying there with her eyes closed. All that long black hair, still in its long curls even after last night. Lashes like feather dusters, lying against her skin. She has those slightly turned up eyes that are almost Asian. Strong cheekbones that look almost Native American. Full lips. But not too full. Her skin is that beautiful golden tan that no tanning booth could copy. She’s lying on her stomach. She has an athlete’s body long, and lean, and toned. She’s so perfect. Long thin fingers on beautiful hands. Pianist fingers with short nails. “You can’t play piano with long nails,” she’s always telling me. Today they are bright purple. She does love color. Almost as much as music. She has such tiny feet. And couldn’t you just write a sonnet to those calves? How can she be so perfect? She says she was just made that way. I suppose so. I look at her and, sometimes, I wonder which one of us is real. We both breathe, our hearts pump, our hair grows. We each worry in our own way. We make love like wild things. All needing. Taking. Giving. I just have to bless technology. Thank those geeky gods. I wish I could just look at her for days. Of course I can’t. Who could? I’ll just slide slowly off the bed so as not to wake her. It’s so hard sometimes, but I have to turn off and plug in.