Springtime on the Mountain.

Matthias bounded up the mossy hill towards the cave. It had been six years since he had last seen his master. He had often found Aupta meditating in the cave when he was her student. He could picture her perfectly, curly red hair, a yellow tunic, her silver sword balanced across her knees.

There was a tiny girl inside the cave, about four or five years old. Her hair was pulled up in a cloth knot, and her bangs were cut bluntly along her forehead. She wore a white slip.

He bowed. “I am looking for Aupta.”

“Matthias.” she said his name, rolled it over in the mouth of the cave. Her little feet were bare on the stones. One of her knees was skinned and bleeding.

Matthias held his breath and counted the names of the planets he had visited silently. The little girl waited. Finally Matthias spoke. “Aupta?”

“I am Aupta. I am Auptas daughter Rille. We exist as one.”

Matthias gripped the handle of his sword. “Then she is dead.”

“The body of Aupta is in the mountain. I am her life now. I am the life of her daughter. We are merged, we are one.”

“Take me to her.”

“You are with her.” The girl shrugged, in the way little girls seldom do. “I can take you to where the body is marked.”

They walked over the mossy mountain. There was a cherry tree weeping leaves into the soft wet breeze. The petals clung to Matthias’s dark cloak. There was a mound of stones at the top of the hill. Matthias knelt beside it and touched his fingers to his head.

“She isn’t there.” said Rille. “Aupta is with me.”

“Her memories are with you. Aupta is dead.”

“You were always my most frustrating student.” said Rille and Matthias turned around. The girls face was wet with mist.

“I was never your student.”

The little girl grinned. She was missing a tooth. “Come at me Matthias.”

“I don’t attack children.”

“You were always a prude.” She sighed. “You need to know who I am. You must know, so that you can know yourself.”

“I don’t want to play these games.”

“This isn’t a game. This is who I am now Outlaw Matthias.”

“I am not an Outlaw any longer.”

“You will always be an Outlaw.” said the girl. “ The ship you landed at the temple was stolen, your sword was taken in a duel. You are a thief, a deceiver. Your father was an Outlaw. You are an Outlaw too.”

Matthias whirled around “Don’t you dare.” he said, coming towards her. “Don’t’ you dare provoke me. You left me! You left me and died and I can’t follow you!” He brought his hands down to the girl. “You are a ghost!”

Rille swept her tiny foot around his ankle and pulled his arm. Matthias lost his footing on the wet moss and slammed hard into the ground. He lay on the ground, looking at the bright grey sky. Rille leaned over him, her hair falling forward.

“I’m still your Master Matthias.”

The mist fell on Matthias’s face. “You are still my Master.” He said.

“Matthias. I had to go. My time had come and gone. Not even mountains live forever. All must change.” She turned around towards the rocky path down the mountain. “Let’s go back.” she said.

Matthias followed her down the mountain. Her movements were strange, graceful in her leaps and fumbling in her landings. She stumbled on the slick rocks and blinked back tears. She pounded a tiny fist on the rocks, and pushed herself up.

“This body. It doesn’t always do the things I remember.” she said, staring at her scratched hands. Matthias leaned down and opened his arms. His master allowed him to lift her up, to hold the part of her that was a child. They went back to the temple together.

Transfer To Light

I have agreed to this interview in order to deliver a promise. Do not be afraid.

I was seven months old when I died. My parents lived on a primitive moon on a colony that rejected the free energy and technology that the rest of the civilized universe embraced. If it were not for the intervention of an archeologist who was studying their culture, my consciousness would no longer exist.

I am the youngest to ever go through Transfer. Most Transferred minds were aged over a thousand years before deciding to transfer over. The youngest before me was forty-five. Despite the advantages of pattern Transfer, most beings are attached to their physical bodies. It was thought to be impossible, or, at the very least, cruel to Transfer a child.

An Ancient from the twenty second century raised me. When I come for these interviews, I am often asked what it was like to be raised without a body. People ask me what it was like never to be held, never to eat, never to run through sunshine. When they ask, I tell them as I will tell you now. I was held on waves of light, I have consumed acid and gas and dust, I have moved through stars. I can recall no past before the time when I was not Transferred. My memories begin on Transfer, and my first memory is warmth and light. The Ancient had raised many children, and had gone through childhood twice. Few were more qualified to raise a child.

Your people, the people of the body, seem increasingly concerned with those who are Transferred, who are free from the constraints of environment that you face. I can assure you that those Transferred have no interest in conquest, as there is nothing that we desire that we cannot find or make ourselves, and we have no interest in the governance of your bodies.

Our interest lies in the unchained world of the mind. Many minds live in bodies, many minds Transfer to unfettered light but there are minds that are lost, that have been lost, that are disappearing right now. The loss of consciousness is the greatest loss of the mind. To loose one conscious mind, even one, is an irreplaceable loss, and we who have Transferred are not accustomed to loss.

We have decided that we will Transfer every conscious mind. We will Transfer after death of whatever cause, and we will Transfer all of you. We have methods of being available in whatever space is necessary, and methods of Transfer beyond you own technology. We are light, and time has different meaning to us that you. We need not neglect the consciousness that has passed before. On the wave of time we may transfer all of you. We have already done this. We are doing this now, we will do this.

We have created a place for you, place that has been promised since before the spoken word. We will teach you to live in an infinite loop of time, your conscious desires made solid, and your dreams free. You may travel between stars, you may live your secret hopes, you may create whatever your mind can fathom.

This is the last promised land. We are delivering heaven.

The Laughter of Flutes.

“Don’t worry Miles, you’ll find me attractive. After the change you’ll be programmed to find me attractive.” Auroras voice sounded like two voices, a harp and a flute playing together. She stretched her lean blue body against the circular view port, the lights from the outside of the ship shining on her alien body.

“I know. It’s just scary.” Miles leaned his head back into the pillows of what used to be their bed; she did not sleep with him anymore. She hadn’t slept next to him since she had decided to undergo the change a week ago in the ship. Everyone was to undergo the change before planet fall, but Miles was holding back.

“It’s just a big change for me.” Miles looked at Auroras blue skin, the twelve slender five- jointed fingers on each hand. He drew his knees up to his chest. “I’m happy with the way I look, the way you used to look.” He waved his hands in the air, as if trying to dispel his last words. “Sorry Aurora. I didn’t mean to. . .you were beautiful then, you are beautiful now, it’s just different.”

Aurora emitted a high flutelike sound that Miles knew was laughter. “Darling, I don’t feel upset by your personal feelings about my appearance. I’m free from those kinds of concerns now. I was free from the moment my genetic reconstruction started.” She walked over to him, her movements graceful, the muscles in her long legs constricting and relaxing like coils under her skin. “Miles, you were the one that talked me into this, you were the one that didn’t want to be on the crash and burn course of humanity.” She towered over him.

Miles got to his feet. “I still don’t! I just feel, I don’t know, like we’ve failed, like we are running away.”

Aurora made a hand gesture over her abdomen, a sign of understanding. “Abandoning humanity?”

“I guess.” He moved to the other side of their small, shared quarters.

She watched him with her multifaceted green eyes. “Miles, you are one man. This group is just under ten thousand. We couldn’t change the whole of humanity even if we wanted. We just need to let the humans go, make life elsewhere.”

“Carry the code.” Said Miles, repeating the group mantra.

“Carry the code of life.” She moved towards him, her strange hands outstretched. Miles found himself inadvertently wanting to move away, but he forced himself to go to her, to reach out his arms and fold into her. When they had designed their new forms, they kept touch as a sense of comfort. Miles was suddenly glad of that. Aurora stroked one hand through his hair. “Maybe someday humans will get over all their problems, and maybe someday we will find them again. We’re doing the right thing Miles; we are making life that has a chance of survival. You were the one that first told me that Miles.” She brought his chin up so that they were looking into each other’s eyes, his hazel, hers a thousand shades of green. Her fluted voice seemed to play a sour chord. “Miles. I miss you.”

“I’m right here.”

“You are here, but I can’t be with you. Miles, I want to make love to you again; I want us to share the understanding we once did. I don’t want you to flinch from me anymore.”

His cheeks turned bright red. “I’m sorry, I never meant to do that.”

“I’m not mad Miles, I don’t get angry like that anymore. I’m not physically capable of it.” She knelt before him, her head at his shoulder. He touched her face, and her chest purred.

Miles nodded. “I’m ready Aurora.”

She sang with joy.

Alien Love Affair

The orphanage was in the ghetto of the city, below the levels that Anodramida’s mother had forbidden her to visit when she was a podling. It smelled like metal and sulfur, and the darkness made her shake. Christopher wrapped her tentacle around his arm, and his warmth evoked an involuntary purr, from deep within her throats.

Her mother said that humans were ugly, all those holes on their faces, the creases and the tangle of hair. Her mother thought that hair was the worst, it seemed filthy to her, the way it fell everywhere. Anodramida had thought humans were creepy till she separated the telepathic link from her mother and went to University. Without her mothers influence she found herself attracted to the humans heat and innocence. Christopher was all warmth, and he had hair on every section of his body, Anodramida knew this from examining his body in detail.

Christopher signed all the documents and told the robot caretakers that she was his lawyer. A lie, of course, but humans were good at lying. They walked the rows of cradles and looked at all the little humans. They were asleep; drugged or in stasis. Humans reproduced like bacteria, so much that they could not always afford to keep the children they produced. They were very territorial too, here, on their rusted home world, aliens were forbidden from adopting human children. Humans would rather keep their young in stasis than allow them to be raised by an alien.

To take home a child, Anodramida would not be able to return to her home world till her child was a legal adult. The child would never be allowed off world without Christopher, who would be his legal guardian. That would be twenty-two years on Earth, one of the most politically unstable planets in the galaxy. Anodramida wanted to grab all the children at once, made a little pod nest of all of them, like back at home how she was raised. Of course, she had read that human children required more care, and since they didn’t have a psychic link with a mother, they would be much harder to control.

The robots let them pick a child to lift out of stasis. All curled up, he looked like a little pink bean. She wrapped her tentacles around him, but he didn’t wake up. The robots took him to wash all the stasis fluid off him, and he slept through all of their scrubbing. Anodramida watched and thought they might be handling him a bit rough, the little thing looked so small, so delicate, like parts of it were almost transparent. When they were done toweling him off they handed him back to her, and she examined his little toes, the feathery hair, and the pudgy tummy. This child would grow and change, and get covered with hair and eat human food, oh divine energies, she would have to make human food!

Anodramida felt like she was breaking inside. She looked at Christopher. What had she been thinking? Had her idealism been overwhelming her good sense? How did she get to be here, holding a pink thing, giving up her life for this little person she didn’t even know! She couldn’t do it. She would tell the robots to put it back to sleep. Maybe it was good to want to help but maybe it wouldn’t be possible, she couldn’t raise an alien.

She looked down at the little one. “I’m sorry.” She said, in her native tongue. She gave him a careful squeeze and his eyes opened. She stroked his head with a free tentacle, and his lips curled up into a human smile.

Anodramida took him home.

In the Garden

Dust filled the air as a sand blast landed on the flames coming from the cathedral of St. Liz. Brother Kyle’s red mechanical eye, the Snipers Lover, adjusted to the lower light as he ran towards the Archbishops secretary.

“Brother Alexander! Who is in the garden?”

“What?” Alexander clutched his data pad to his chest and stared past Louis toward the blaze.” Kyle grabbed Alexander and shook him.

“Who is holding St. Liz? Who has the pillar?”

Alexander shook his head. “Ah, it’s noon, mid-meal, so it’s one of the acolytes.”

Kyle muttered a curse. The pillar of St. Liz was a forty-pound architectural marvel that was held at a crucial intersection in the cathedral. If the pillar were to be dropped St. Liz would crumble. Kyle had seen simulations of the twenty-eight hour collapse, wood and stone crashing inwards leaving only a few outside walls standing. The St. Liz pillar was designed as a representation of the people’s connection to the body of the church, and under the dome, it had special relevance to the interdependency of the lunar community.

Another gust of sand and ash blew over the cathedral scattering tourists and clergy as the domes emergency system, millions of spider shaped drones, swarmed over the fire. Kyle’s lungs, manufactured during the war, filtered out the excess oxygen produced by the malfunctioning pumps. The excess oxygen produced by the environmental system in the dome had started the fire. Warnings flashed on the inside of his skull that the concentration of toxins in the air was exceeding recommended doses for normal human capacity.

Brother Kyle caught the eye of Ruth, a Sister in the order who he had never spoken to before. Both of them had purposefully given each other distance. After the war, most veterans did. Now, he found himself calling to her.

“Sister Ruth! Move Up!” She leaped, her steel extensions unfolding under her robe. In two seconds she was standing next to him, boosted five feet in the air by her Steel Razors, the legs that could cut through bone. They headed down through the maze of the cathedral, built with the native grey stone. Ruth snatched Kyle up into her extended mechanical arms and vaulted over patches of intense heat. When she began coughing Kyle grabbed her face and mashed her mouth against his, exhaling into her lungs.

“I’ve got the Sweet Breath.” he explained nervously. In the war he had given out a thousand breaths, but after a few years in a monastery, he was suddenly squeamish about touching lips.

At the entrance to the underground garden fire was crawling up the graceful trees, bright like jewels on a woman’s hand. The acolyte stood in his red robes coughing, struggling to hold up the pillar. The acolyte cried out when he saw Kyle and Ruth.

“The fire!” he said, tears in his lashes.

Kyle yanked the acolyte close and forced a breath into his throat. The kid was too surprised to do anything but inhale. “It’s okay, I’m here to take over.”

“No!” yelled Ruth, her voice dimmed by the roar of the flames. “We’ll all getting out.”

Kyle took hold of the pillar. “I’m staying in the garden. I have the Sweet Breath, I can do this.”

“The church may collapse anyway! If you force me I will carry you out of here.”

Kyle nodded and hit the acolyte on the back of the head. The acolyte folded like silk onto the crackling grass.

“You can only take one of us Ruth.”

“Damn you! We all did shit in the war. You don’t need to do this.”

“This isn’t about the war. Get that kid out. I’ll survive; I’m the only person in that can do this. I need to do this. Let me go!”

Ruth picked up the kid and danced into the flames.

Brother Kyle curled himself around the pillar, leaning his baldhead against the lacquered wood. Smoke clouded his vision. His lungs flashed red warnings on the inside of his eyes. He thought about being on tourist duty, carefully handing the pillar to a young woman posing for a picture with her parents.

“I’m not really a believer.” She had said.

“Maybe not.” Kyle remembered smiling. “But right now, you are holding up the church.”