Gradient Heart

The galley of Fractal IV buzzed with excitement as the worldship entered the Leodys Star System. A toast to the red supergiant far in the distance. A song for the fluorescent moons of a nearby planet. A salute to the escort of warships flanking every which way. Fractal IV had made it through the Withering Abyss, and its crew showered its inner walls with a kiss for every meddling centurion killed in its path. 

There were lots of kisses.

Sentinel Lagos set down an all-too-full drink of amber ale and unholstered his gradient pistol. He tinkered with the settings, swiping through the modes like a drunken space pirate looking for a late night peg, except he wasn’t drunken.

“Good thing ale is on the house tonight.” Gunner Jarus tossed a deck of playing cards onto the table and sat in front of the unsipped ale, grabbing the mug with one hand. In another, he set down his tonic, and in another, he grabbed the cards. “What will it be?” His last free hand massaged the shoulder of the sullen sentinel at his side. “Poker? Black Jack?”

“Not now,” Lagos said, removing the hand on his shoulder. “Can’t you tell I’m in no mood?”

“Oh, the entire deck can tell.” The gunner took the pistol from the sentinel’s hands and shoved the weapon aside. The glow on the barrel faded. “Plasma, huh?”

“Go away, Jarus.”

“Come on, we’ll be landing on Arratreselle soon. You always wanted to check out the clubs on Arratreselle.” Jarus chugged a mugful of ale.

“Wanted.”

“You still want to, no?”

“Arrastreselle was before her.”

Jarus stood up, moved behind Lagos, and placed a hand on each shoulder and each arm.

Lagos let out a muffled cry. “She didn’t deserve to go like that.”

“No, it was a terrible way to go.”

Shrugging his shoulders and turning his neck, Lagos eyed the quadling at his back. “Really?”

“What? It really was.”

“Can I just be left alone for like a minute?”

Jarus sat down, back to the table. “Listen,” he said. “I can count the number of times I’ve suffered through this kind of loss on my fingers — and I have way more than you — so just look around and celebrate what we have here. There are glowing planets, man.”

“Those are moons.”

“Yet do they glow.”

Lagos slammed his fist onto the table. Patrons nearby stared in silence, covering their mouths as they whispered and waddled away. “Maveera, she wasn’t like any of yours.”

“You know, I tried, Lagos. I really, really tried to be on your side on this one, but I guess it’s just not hurt unless it happens to you, and she wasn’t even real.” Jarus picked up the cards and left the galley.

The sentinel sat at the table through the night, if there were such a thing on the worldship, hands in pockets and head bowed down, and while the lights dwindled with each passing hour, the ache in Lagos’ heart and soul engorged and crippled his will to leave even the very table where he had met the source of his distraught.

It had been three years almost to the date. Sentinel Lagos had returned from near-death on an exploratory mission into an asteroid field, and upon his arrival to the debriefing zone, he saw her, Maveera, winning the final challenge on Survivors: Planet Euclidesta. Lagos had wanted to apply for the competition years prior, but his duties came before anything else. Through Maveera, he would live vicariously, following her every word and every step as she claimed victory.

For her accomplishment, Maveera had been rewarded with a cloning of her consciousness. The very quirks and attitudes she exuded in front of quintillions would be made available for a hefty fee, and luckily, Lagos had saved enough from high-risk operations that he was able to afford such an experience, such a prize. He had bought a shell to house the artificial intelligence and propped it on the very seat on which he now sat.

“Can you hear me?” Lagos had said after turning on the program. “Are you there?”

The cloned Maveera hadn’t answered at first, but with a few light smacks, some perhaps rather rough, the shell whirred, and she answered, “Hello, Lagos.” 

And the rest was history, until Fractal IV had plummeted into the Withering Abyss. It was the great expanse blocking the Leodys system from the rest of the alliance. It also had a knack for knocking out computer systems, a development Lagos was quite aware of. Unfortunately for Maveera, the abyss had done more than shut her down — it had driven her mad. It had fueled her processors with hate and anger and rage. It had erased all that made Maveera, well, Maveera.

Captain Kalorexche had seen enough of the destruction Maveera had caused and ordered her to be decommissioned. Maveera had fought as well as any such thing in such a shell could, but in the end, it was the sentinel himself who pulled the final trigger.

Lagos snapped out of his trance and grabbed his gradient pistol. It was still set to plasma. He looked around the galley. Not a soul was in sight. No laughter. No spurts of conversation. No mugs clanking. He checked the time and left the galley, and as he walked the corridors, again, he saw nothing. So late into the night was it that the entire ship was asleep, but the sentinel knew, as he always had, that captains do not sleep, at least not Captain Kalorexche.

Lagos turned corner after corner, dipping in and out of tight turns and low walls. His massive frame wasn’t made for such hallways, and he wondered why, of all ships, was he placed on the one with the smallest of crewmates. At last, he arrived at the helm of the worldship. The door to the bridge opened as the sentinel stepped inside.

“Sentinel,” Captain Kalorexche said. The captain set down a snack and sat back, book in one hand and a monocle in the other.

“Captain,” Lagos said, walking up to the massive viewing window before them. He stared out into the darkness.

“A bit late for you, is it, sentinel?”

“I can’t sleep.”

“I can imagine.”

Lagos touched the glass. “Can … you?”

The captain placed a bookmark in his book, set it down, and brought both hands together, intertwining his fingers and twiddling this thumbs. “Yes, I can. You must understand I did what I had to do to protect this ship. To protect this cargo. To protect everyone. I more than anyone know your pain.”

“You don’t need to lie.” Lagos turned around. “Your kind knows no empathy. None of us do. That’s what made her better than any of us. She taught me to know what it would be to know another’s pain, and you took that away.”

“She was going to murder innocent civilians.”

“She would have been fine if you didn’t change course into the abyss.”

“Then what, those Laplorian Horrors catch up and take us to who knows where to live out our days in chains?” The captain coughed and returned to his seat, almost tripping over his own feet. With one hand on the armrest, he lowered himself down and laid back, staring up at the ornate ceiling.

“Why do I feel like I’m the one in chains.”

“She wasn’t real, Lagos.” The captain coughed again, this time dry heaving into his hands. “She was mass produced. You have to know that she was literally one of millions, not one in a million.”

Lagos pulled out his gradient pistol and charged. With one hand on Kalorexche’s collar and the other on the weapon, he screamed, “Say that again! Say she was mass produced! Say she was one of millions!”

The captain coughed and choked, heaving and heaving until blood spat out from mouth and nose.

“What the hell,” Lagos said. “What is this?”

“It’s blood.”

“I know what blood is.”

“I know.”

The captain and the sentinel remained still as moments became minutes and minutes became movements so slow that even the stillness of the darkness beyond the glass seemed to pass at terrifying speeds.

“Why is it red?” Lagos asked.

“You know why it’s red.”

“You’re … human?”

The captain took in shallow breaths, and he churned out a river of tears, relieving the drought in his eyes that had been afflicting him for years. “I said I wasn’t lying. Would a god be able to empathize with you?”

“But, but you killed her."

“She was a machine, Lagos. If I didn’t do what I did, would I still even be human?”

“Why are you here, so far from home? Earthians have plenty of safe havens to go to. Why help these fallen gods? Why help me?”

“You’re incredible gods. The galaxy’s pantheons might shun and hunt you for your silver blood, but it is as rare as you are beautiful. You don’t need a machine to tell you that. You don’t need a human to tell you that.”

Lagos let go of the captain and walked back to the viewing window. “Are you dying?”

“Yes.”

“The abyss?”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“When this night ends.”

“But … it’s almost morning.”

Lagos turned around and stared at the captain. There Kalorexche was, slumped over, body limp, and blood staining his once white uniform. At his feet lay his book, upside-down, and a displaced bookmark. Lagos picked up the book and began to read from the beginning. Though the cover was that of a popular Neshian novel, the words did not match. No, instead, they began, “The story so far: in the beginning, the universe was created.”

End