Bored in deep space - Novelisation -
Chapter 17 - TAMA (10)
A slow breath of genuine, unadulterated relief escaped my lungs, a sound like a dam breaking after a flood of pressure. My entire body, a collection of aches and phantom pains from a journey half-remembered, seemed to unclench in that single, definitive instant. I wasn't a hero, nor was I a saviour; this entire ordeal and my struggle was never about that. I was just a stubborn, frightened man who had found his North Star again, and that fact was more comforting than any grand destiny I could've imagined. I let out a soft, incredulous chuckle, my eyes fixed on her. The sheer, beautiful absurdity of it all; she, a nascent god with the collective memory of a cosmic race, was tied to my own meagre, flickering lifespan. I couldn't even imagine what the rest of her life -- after I'm gone -- would look like. It was both a frightening and exciting prospect… for her.
"Good," I said, my voice sounding a little raspy with an emotion I refused to name. "Because, you know, I was thinking about it, and I've decided I plan on living a very, very long life." An unforced, honest grin spread over my face. "I figure you, with your cosmic library, could increase my longevity a bit further past the norm." I joked. "Anyway, retirement's out. Heck, I've been in this bizarre universe for three whole years but I've spent it in a secluded corner. I'm craving a sense of adventure. So, I'm thinking more of a world… well, I guess galactic tour. A century or two of seeing everything there is to see. It's only fair. It's the least you can do after putting me through that nightmare, machine funhouse."
"Life extension can easily be arranged. There are approximately 59273 different methods to achieve the results according to the old machines' archives," Tama replied, her eyes staring directly at me, very seriously considering it. "Would you like to schedule a procedure once we return to the SV-Eclipse II?"
She was serious. I was joking. I started sweating. "A-Alright then…" I said, my tone shifting to a stuttering panic. "Let's… let's get out of this tomb. This place has had enough of us, and God knows I've had enough of it."
Pivoting on my heels quickly, I turned to survey the way I'd come. My faux-smile faltered. The vast, dark chamber stretched out before me, a uniform, lightless ocean of machinery and shadows. There were no landmarks, no distinguishable features, no path illuminated by a dying star. The single, brilliant point of light radiating from Tama created a sphere of visibility around us, but beyond its comforting glow, there was only an impenetrable wall of darkness. The entrance I had fought my way through, the chasms, the nightmarish labyrinth, the twisted metal hallways -- it might as well have been on another planet for all the good it did me now. I was completely lost. I turned my back to her, a sheepish, defeated look on my face. "So… which way is out? I mean, I'm not entirely sure how we got here in the first place. I was busy dodging rogue machines and living out office life simulations. Estelle mentioned three and a half years, but my internal clock seems to be running on some kind of glitchy software. I've maybe experienced a few weeks of that, and I was pretty preoccupied for most of that." If it took me three years to make it to this point, then this place must've been a superstructure.
Tama watched my brief spiral of spatial disorientation with a patient, almost maternal amusement. Her form, a silhouette of liquid shadow against the golden aura. Remained perfectly still. There was a flicker in her eyes, a rapid calculation that encompassed not just the schematic of this entire labyrinth but my own flawed perception of it.
"There is a faster way to leave," she said, her voice a calm reassurance in the oppressive darkness. "Your journey, Captain, involved navigating the outer layers of this structure -- the regions where senility and decay has taken root. We are deeper now. This is the sanctuary. The core."
But before she took the first step towards a path I couldn't see, she paused. A slight, almost imperceptible hesitation. Her head turned, not with the fluid, graceful motion of an ascended being, but with a slower, more deliberate weight, as if she were moving through a denser medium than mere air. Her molten-orange gaze, a universe of new light, fell upon the silent, slumped form of her sister.
Estelle sat exactly as she had, a statue carved from obsidian and rust in her throne of cables. But the sentinel was gone. The faint, lingering pink of her dying embers had been extinguished. She was now truly an artifact, a shell of function that had been fulfilled. In a galaxy of trillions, she was the lone occupant of a single, forgotten memory, now laid to rest.
Tama stood in silence for a long moment, a tableau of cosmic handover. From the First Star of Astellion, whose long, lonely watch had ended in darkness, to the Last Star, whose reign was just beginning in the gloom. There were no words of farewell. No eulogy for a dead god. Only the shared, wordless communication of two beings who understood the nature of duty and release. It was a look of profound, immeasurable respect, a daughter closing the eyes of her mother after the longest of vigils.
Then, the weight of her posture lifted. The connection broke. She turned her back towards me, her gaze softening again as it settled on my small, breathing form. "Follow me," she said, the words a clear instruction that held no ambiguity. A new start.
She stepped forward, not towards one of the vast, shadowy arches that I mentally designated as 'potential exits', but directly towards the featureless, smooth iron wall of the chamber at my right. She moved with an unnatural, silent grace, her feet leaving no prints in the ancient dust, the golden light that followed her revealing the wall to be exactly as it appeared -- a solid, seamless slab of unyielding metal.
I stared, bewildered, at the sheer, unbroken metal. There was no door, no panel, no visible seam or mechanism. "I'm not trying to second-guess the newly ascended goddess," I said, my footsteps heavy as I trudged over to join her, "but that's a wall. A very big, very solid wall. Are you going to punch through it? Because if you are, I think I'd rather take the scenic route than dig."
In response, Tama raised a single, slender, metallic finger. She traced a complex, geometric pattern in the air, a gesture that had no visible effect, yet the very fabric of the wall before her seemed to shudder. She was interfacing with some unknown, unseeable system. A section, perhaps three metres high and two wide, dissolved. Not into a thousand pieces or in a shower of sparks, but simply… ceased to be there. One moment, it was solid metal, and the next, it was a perfectly square, perfectly black aperture, a hole in reality that led into a corridor bathed in the same ethereal, warm amber glow as Tama herself. It felt like the entire route had become her domain.
"Ah," I said, my eloquent response hanging in the suddenly less-stale air. "Right. The faster way."
We stepped through together. The corridor beyond was as straight as a laser beam, its floor smooth and unadorned, its walls flowing with amber light, quietly pulsing in slow waves like a current in a placid river. The silence here was a bit different. Not the tomb-like silence of the chamber, nor the agony of the labyrinth, but a restful quiet. This was the last functioning part of the city, or whatever this place was, its systems still humming along, its lights still burning, waiting patiently for the end to arrive.
"This feels… different," I remarked out aloud, my whisper feeling like a shout in the hallowed stillness. "Less 'horror movie set', more 'impossibly expensive tech boutique'."
"This is a primary conduit, a foundational layer untouched by the decay of the superstructure.," Tama explained, her serene form gliding effortlessly beside me. "Its function is essential for the final maintenance protocols. It has not required modification since its creation."
The corridor wasn't long. Maybe a hundred metres or so. It ended, as abruptly as it began, in a large, open circular platform. At the centre of the platform was a raised dais of the same dark, polished metal as everything else, inscribed with complex, glowing circuit diagrams that pulsed in perfect synchrony with the ambient light. It looked simple and unassuming, but when I stepped onto the platform, my skin prickled with a strange, static energy, and my hearing was filled with a high-pitched, almost inaudible whine.
"So this is it," I said, stepping off the platform to stand at its edge. "A teleporter of some kind? Of course it is. You know," I mused, half to her, "the future is pretty convenient if you've got things like this. My commute back in my old life involved forty-five minutes of jammed highways and a guy in a van that always cut me off at the same intersection." I sighed wistfully. "I could've used one of these to get to the office."
Tama's lips twitched with that phantom smile I was so sure was there but not really. It was a fleeting, human expression that vanished before I could register it. "Designation: 'Teleporter' is a common, but functionally crude, terminology," she clarified, her tone shifting back to the calm, lecturing mode of the AI she once was. Well, she was still an AI… but same difference. "The Silent Architects -- the race you know as the progenitors of the old machines -- did not create simple transit systems for cargo. The folded space for their very presence. This process is designated in the archives as 'Blinking'." She gestured towards the dais. "And its convenience is not a feature of your 'future', Captain. This technology is not something you would see anywhere else in this galaxy. The level of precision required to safely deconstruct and reconstruct a physical object on a molecular level, across any distance without a fixed receiving apparatus is beyond the manufacturing and theoretical capabilities of the current known galactic civilisations."
My eyes shot up. "Blinking, huh…" I repeated, testing the word on my tongue. It was a common terminology in a lot of online games back then. "Silent Architects… So that's what she was, then? The ghostly woman who guided me here, calling the old machines her 'children'? One of them?" The pieces were clicking into place; the grand, hidden story slowly revealing itself.
"A residual sub-protocol. An echo of their final will," Tama confirmed. "Like Estelle, but with far more autonomy. And a more developed personality, designed to interact with variables like yourself." Her explanation continued, her voice a smooth, precise lecture. "There is also a functional distinction you must understand between this current galactic era's faster-than-light travel, the Space Fold, and Blinking." She held up a single finger. "One. A Fold Drive can only ever be installed on large, mobile constructs -- starships, and sometimes space stations. Its purpose is to facilitate travel over vast interstellar distances. Due to the immense energy gradients involved and the risk of catastrophic spacetime shearing, it is physically impossible to execute a Fold Jump over a short range. You cannot Fold from a planet's surface to a station in orbit." She raised a second finger. "Two. Blinking suffers no such theoretical limitations. The energy profile is not about bending space time, but about momentarily punching a pinhole through it. The distance is irrelevant. The scale is irrelevant. Blinking is, for all intents and purposes, instantaneous point-to-point travel, regardless of whether those points are in the same room or on different planets."
I mulled that over. A perfect, instantaneous taxi that can take you anywhere, for anyone with the keys. "So the people who built this place could have just… gone anywhere, any time they wanted?" I was starting to understand the profound sense of smallness such a technology could bring. It's a bit of an off-comparison, but I likened it to the fast-travel mechanics in video games. It's convenient, but oftentimes leaves the games and worlds feeling smaller and less detailed. In much the same way, for those Silent Architects, the galaxy might have seemed like a small, frustrating pond.
"Anywhere," Tama confirmed simply. Then she turned her brilliant, orange eyes from the teleporter and looked directly at me. Her gaze dropped, fixing on the small, unassuming object clinging to my chest. "Which brings us to a third distinction," she said, her tone a careful, quiet emphasis. "And that it is not limited to starships or space stations. Or even locked to Silent Architect biology."
I peered down to the silver clip on my tie, the small, unobtrusive device that had acted as my armour, my weapon, my shield against dying gods. I had almost forgotten it was there, a forgotten souvenir of my strange bargain with the ghost woman. "This thing?" I asked, my voice laced with doubt. "This can Blink?"
"Yes," Tama stated. "It is a personal node. A personal key. Designed for a variable like yourself, Captain. While my ascended consciousness can harness the energy of this entire structure to Blink at will, that device contains a tiny, potent, self-contained reservoir of the same fundamental energy. You, Captain Noah Lee, using that very clip on your tie, can also Blink. Though," she added, a sliver of practical caution threading through her otherwise instruction-manual-esque explanation. "I calculate its reserves are sufficient for approximately three to four discrete jumps over planetary distances before it would require a full-cycle recharge from a dedicated power source. So… you should choose your destinations carefully."
My right hand instinctively reached up and touched the cool metal of the clip, a small, solid anchor in a sea of incomprehensible concepts. Three to four jumps, meaning at a smaller scale I could do more? Or was that not how it worked? It felt both like a god-like power and a paltry, finite resource. My mind, still trapped in the bureaucratic scramblings of a 21st century office worker, immediately fixated on the practicalities, the return policy. I thought of the ghostly woman's calm, detached demeanour. A gift this powerful, this universe-breaking, had to have strings attached, right? It's one thing to loan out a prototype stapler; it's another to just hand over the keys to reality itself. I bet it's even more expensive than my yearly subscription to that space 4X game, Stellar Hegemony.
"Wait a second," I muttered under my breath, my thumb stroking the smooth surface of the clip. "She's not going to want this back, is she? What was her name, anyway?" The question hung in the quiet, glowing corridor, another loose thread in the impossibly complex tapestry of the last few years… or weeks. I looked over at Tama, my brows furrowed with the mundane logistics of my cosmic treasure hunt, but she merely watched me with an expression of serene patience.
"The name," a calm, familiar voice answered from directly behind me, "...is Aurora."
I nearly jumped out of my skin. The reflex was pure, primal 21st century office drone; my heart hammered against my ribs and I spun around with a gracelessness that sent a puff of ancient dust swirling at my feet.
There she was.
The ghostly woman. She wasn't standing in the corridor as Tama and I were, but was instead a semi-transparent apparition materialised in the empty space between us and the dark wall, a phantom composed of soft, white-blue light. She looked exactly as she had on the bridge of the new SV-Eclipse; her figure was wrapped in a simple lab coat, her features placid, and her eyes holding the same weary, ancient wisdom that had seen the birth and death of entire worlds and civilisations. She looked less like a ghost and more like a memory of a person made real. Like the recordings of a person left behind long after their passing.
"Aurora," she repeated, her voice a soft echo that didn't so much travel through the air as it simply materialised inside my head. "It was my name, when such things as names had meaning. Before we became… abstract concepts."
My gaze darted from her insubstantial form back to the solid, impossibly dense metal clip on my chest, my mind struggling to reconcile the two. "But this—"
"Is a gift," she interrupted gently, finishing my sentence with a knowing smile. "A token of apology for our children's… overly enthusiastic methods. And an acknowledgement of your… unique variable status." Her gaze seemed to look past my own, into the very core of the matter I was wrestling with. "I can sense your human-centric hesitation, Noah Lee. Your transactional brain, honed in a world of receipts and exchanges, is seeking the catch. Allow me to reassure you."
She stepped forward, her spectral form passing without resistance through one of the glowing light strips embedded in the wall. "To you, and the crude, young civilisations of this era, that device on your chest is a technological marvel. A key to a function you cannot fathom. To my kind? To the Silent Architects?" A faint, weary amusement touched her lips, a look one might give a child marvelling at a sparkler. "It is of no more significance than the ballpoint pen you used for your Q3 reports, or the stapler you kept stealing from Harry's desk."
I flinched at the mention of 'Q3 reports', a phantom pang of corporate dread striking a chord that was both painful and deeply nostalgic. I chuckled, I wondered how Harry would've responded if he knew his name was being spoken by some futuristic goddess. Aurora's smile softened with a hint of what might've been an apology. "I am taking those similes directly from your mind to make the concepts more comprehensible," she clarified, her tone a gentle correction. "Forgive me. We had no use for such things, of course. But the principle remains. For a being who could fold a star into a paperweight for amusement, crafting a personal Blink device would have been a minor afternoon project. A trinket. Your worry about its return is like a squirrel worrying about being asked to give back a particularly nice acorn. It is yours."
I clutched at the clip firmly in my fingers, a precious and sentimental gift. "Is that… so?"
The spectral woman, Aurora, gave a slow, deliberate nod. Her smile was not one of simple amusement, but something deeper, a profound, cosmic gratitude that made the air around her feel thin and heavy all at once. "It is yours," she reiterated softly, her form shimmering like a heat haze on a summer road. She then turned her insubstantial gaze towards Tama, and the satisfaction in her expression was unmistakable. It was the look of an artisan who had just seen her magnum opus finally, perfectly completed. "And thank you, Captain," she said, her words resonating with a sincerity that was both humbling and terrifying. "Thank you for… allowing our children to have their final word. For allowing the weaving to proceed. Without your… persistence… Tama's existence would have remained a theory, and their story would have truly ended."
I shrugged. "Well, call it a 21st century habit. I was told never to unplug a PC when it was updating." A crude, sarcastic comparison, but not wholly inaccurate. "When I saw… Tama there," I said, glancing at my companion beside me. "I just didn't want to hinder her with my own selfishness. And honestly, I think that was the best outcome now that I've calmed down and thought about it. Just tell your children to be a bit more negotiable next time."
Her head tilted slightly, a gesture of both apology and warning. "I apologise again for their enthusiastic methods. They were, for the most part, custodial subroutines, the echoes of a fading consciousness attempting to solve the problem of their own ending using the blunt, desperate tools they had left." A flicker of melancholy passed through her translucent features. "They lacked the nuance, the warmth, the… illogical empathy that you, and by extension Calliope, provided."
Her spectral form became more opaque, the blue haze around her becoming slightly staticky and less defined. "But understand this, Noah Lee," she said, her utterance of my name grounding me back into the strange, terrifying reality I now inhabited. "The story of Astellion, the saga of the old machines, is just one book on a very, very large shelf. This conclusion… it is an ending, yes. But it is not The End."
A chill crept up my spine that had nothing to do with the room's ambient temperature. Tama remained silent and still, a serene, luminous statue, her gaze fixed on Aurora, her newly formed expression unreadable.
"The Silent Architects were the first," Aurora continued, her voice dropping, each word heavy with the weight of eons. "We learned the fundamental laws of the universe in an empty library. The things we built, the concepts we grasped, were woven into the very fabric of existence when the current races were still single-celled organisms drifting in primordial soup. We could not take it all with us when we departed. So much was left behind." She raised a hand, and for a fleeting second, I could see the reflection of a vast, star-dusted galaxy imprinted on her translucent palm. "Echos, like myself. Artifacts. Databanks. Technologies and principles of existence so far beyond your comprehension that they would seem like magic." Her gaze sharpened, her focus once more pinning me in place. "And this era, this current, bustling, noisy galactic civilisation with its Fold Drives, its Imperial Nobility, its petty corporate wars, and its Guilds… they know our echoes exist. They have been searching for them from the moment they achieved FTL. Imperial houses, with bloodlines older than some civilisations, believe our artifacts are their divine right. Hyper-corporations, vast and soulless, see them as the ultimate intellectual property to be acquired and monetised. Other organisations, ancient secret societies, see them as a shortcut to godhood."
She let that sink in. The sheer scale of the secret she had just unveiled. The universe I had barely begun to understand wasn't just a neutral expanse of stars. It was a giant, treasure-hunting ground for the toys of giants who had long since left the sandbox.
"Finding Astellion was, statistically speaking, a miracle of near-impossible odds. A needle in a galactic haystack. But there are other needles. Other hidden worlds Other failed systems. Other sleeping subroutines like me." Her smile returned, but it was thin and weary. "You now travel with a living embodiment of one of those artifacts, Captain. You are a walking signpost to a power that the most powerful players in this galaxy would commit genocides to possess."
Her warning was clear and chilling in its simplicity. I let loose a breath I didn't realise I'd been holding.
"Your story with us is over, Captain," she continued. "But your story in this universe… is just beginning. And you will no longer be an insignificant anomaly lost in dark space. You will be observed." With those words, her form began to dissolve, the swirling nebulae in her body unwinding like spools of cosmic thread, her features softening back into the indistinct, shimmering light from which she had formed. "Be careful," was her final, echoing whisper, a faint imprint of a warning left behind in the silent, humming corridor. Then she was gone.
I stood there, frozen. Her words echoed in the vast emptiness she left behind. The simple relief I felt just moments prior had been shattered, replaced by a new, cold, and heavy unease. I looked at Tama, who had watched the entire exchange with an expression of placid understanding. Her brilliant orange eyes met mine. I realised, with a jolt, that she already knew. Of course, she did. It was all part of the data, the history, the soul she inherited.
I opened my mouth to say something, to ask her just how much trouble we were in, but the words wouldn't form. All I managed was a strangled laugh, the sound pathetic in the face of the infinite cosmic danger that Aurora had just described. "Be careful," I repeated. "Well, there's a cheery send-off. Just once, I'd like to get a 'Good luck, go have fun!' from one of you ancient, all-powerful beings."
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, forcing my tense shoulders to relax. It didn't work. Then, with a decisiveness that felt both brave and monumentally cringe, I strode onto the glowing dais in the centre of the teleporter platform. I turned to face tama. "Alright. Enough ominous foreshadowing from the ghost department. We've got a universe to tour, remember? Let's get going. Beam us up, Scotty." The joke landed with the dead thud in the quiet, high-tech chamber. Tama just watched me with her calm, knowing expression.
And then we were no longer inside the nightmare superstructure.