Wicked Game – James Vincent McMorrow
These Lonely Stars
400 years after EOE (evacuation of Earth)
The blare of alarm belted throughout Marlo’s quarters, jarring him painfully. He was half awake as he fell from bed and scrambled to his feet, fumbling for his clothes. For a moment he paused, wondering why he bothered to dress. There’s no one to see you, Marlo! He grabbed his clothes and roughly dragged it over his head, reminding himself that for his own sanity he ought to – as per the guide book he’d been given when he was woken by the last keeper. He stumbled into his living area and over to the control console, tugging down his shirt in the process.
Blinking awake he yawned and tapped on the console, scrolling down through the systems display. He got down to the alarm and froze; he snapped quickly into focus and brought up the fault, diagnosing specifically the area. As it came up he was off, darting out of his room barefoot. Shoes would come for another time. The stupid guidebook be damned.
He flew off to the mag-lift and slamming his hand into the controls. The lift shot off downwards, faster than originally designed – one of the previous keepers had been a daredevil and easily bored. Marlo held on tight for a few seconds until it hummed to a sharp stop and the doors opened. Then he was off again, sprinting down the hallway, the lights flickering precariously above him. His stomach twisted.
Come on, you can’t be the one keeper who screws up his rotation!
Yet as he made it to the astronomy lab, the main hub for their long-distance scanning, vital in detecting potential collisions and calculating safe routes. It communicated directly to the bridge and the relays they had on the hull, which from time to time, were damaged from a myriad of things. Sometimes he’d have to stop the ship, go out and manually repair it himself – the robots they had could only do so much and they were increasingly unreliable in recent years. To his relief as he checked over the systems and found it was a power surge. Some wiring was fried, which broke communications direct to the bridge. Fortunately, navigation wasn’t affected. He’d taken care to carefully isolate such things before.
It took him an hour fiddling up the consoles in the lab to repair the localised damage. Then another hour ensuring all lines were back up. There were some other nearby systems affected but nothing major, which meant it could wait until he’d eaten, maybe did a run and then a shower, followed by a little nap. As he finished up he let out a breath of relief and slumped on one of the chairs.
“Crisis averted,” he declared, the effort of speaking aloud gnawing at him.
He then rose and went calmly back into the hall. The lights no longer flickered above him but held strong in a bright, clear white glow. They guided his way back to the mag-lift. As he swiped to step in he felt a jolt of energy rush down his spin, the hairs on his arms prickling up. For a moment he had the strangest moment he was being watched. He shoved it away. Such thoughts were dangerous, hardly healthy for a keeper.
When he got up to the bridge he quickly ran his morning diagnostics before he slipped back into his room. From there his routine followed its predictable pattern; a morning shower, some rehydrated food – though he had no idea what it was meant to be food wise – then he went for a run around the ship. He was fit, so he ran the length the entire ship, which took a little over two hours, right to the observation deck. It had been carefully cultivated some years ago into a makeshift garden. Soil had been moved from storage and the hydroponics bays which was meant to grow much of his food but, since it had failed some time ago, the observation deck was altered. Not because it made growing any easier. No, vast changes had been made to create a good climate to grow, the leisure pools made into garden beds which had been extended by shallower fields of dirt. From them grew bushes of fruit and vegetables, most of which weren’t ready for eating at the moment. A few rare trees had been grown and were tended to carefully; special panels that had been modified above gave extra ‘sunlight’ and even watered it on a structured, but rationed, cycle.
In many ways it was his Eden. A surprise that he’d been woken to but a welcome one. When the weeks stretched out where the ship ran smoothly the garden kept him busy. It was a lot of work to maintain such a haven on a ship racing through the great expanse of space. It also reminded him of Earth – well, of his childhood memories, the ones of his Gran’s gardens. There hadn’t been a lot of green when he took the job and launched into space with a myriad of other people, desperate for a new home.
As he sat beneath one of the trees, munching on a barely ripened apple, he felt a rush of energy through him again. He looked around, wondering what the hell had shocked him when he saw a flash of movement behind one of the trees. Blinking, thinking he was going crazy, he stood up.
“Hello?”
The flash of movement came again, much closer; then, an orb of light, hovering there in front of him, a few feet away. His rational mind scrambled to grasp what he saw, fumbling around for answers. All that came to him was that he’d lost his mind, that he was seeing things. It happened sometimes with keepers. Luckily, the ship was programmed to wake up a keeper if the previous one…died suddenly. It was how his previous keeper had been woken.
“Hello.” A crackle imitation of his voice sang back, softer somehow.
“I’m losing it,” he declared, looking up, as if the stars above might answer him.
“I’m losing it.” The reply came again, clearer, feminine somehow.
When he looked down the orb was gone. He blinked but nothing came back. It was weeks before he saw the orb again. He was doing his rounds amongst the vast chambers filled with cryo pods when he saw the orb again, this time much bigger, almost as big as him, and more like an oval. It hovered several feet away and he had the strangest feeling it was watching him.
“Hello,” said the entity in a clear, musical voice.
“Um, hello again,” he said, trying to ignore it as he walked on into the next chamber.
The entity followed him. “Hello.”
“You said that already,” he found himself replying.
“Hello.”
He spun around. “Can’t you say anything else? If I’m imagining you shouldn’t you talk better? I feel like I’m going to go crazier than I probably already am if you keep it up.”
The entity’s shape seemed to change, just a fraction. It moved towards him, and he took a step back.
“Friend?” The entity asked.
He froze. “I never said that before…Wait, do you understand?”
He would’ve loved to believed that inadvertently he’d made first contact somehow. Impossible as it seemed on a ship hurtling through space. He wasn’t even sure how it would’ve gotten on…The power surge, maybe? But, if it was learning off what he said, how had it even known the word friend?
“Know. Learn.”
The light dispelled before him, shooting into one of the nearby panels. He wondered if it was somehow learning off the computers; speech, maybe even trying to take a shape he knew. After all, he swore it was trying to make a human shape. That, or he was clinging to the delusional hope that he might not be so alone.
Over the weeks he went about his chores; checking the cryo pods, tending to the gardens, checking the star charts, mapping, inspecting the ration pack storage, and tending to minor problems that cropped up. Every couple of days the entity returned, like clockwork really, and followed him. Sometimes for a few minutes, other times for hours. The conversation in the beginning had been stilted but, slowly, it stared to develop. As he sat at the edge of the garden, staring out at the vast, endless space, he counted himself lucky that he had someone to talk to. Not that he was completely sure the entity was real, that he hadn’t imagined it all because he was that bloody lonely.
“Hello.”
He didn’t glance up. Looking at the bright glow of the entity hurt if it was too close. “Hey. I haven’t seen you in a couple days. Where have you been off exploring?”
A hand fell over his resting on his knee. He glanced down, startled, then looked up and fell over. With a gasp he scrambled to his feet. Standing before him was a girl. Well, a woman. She looked about his physical age. Young. Dark olive skin set against long, flowing black hair in wild curls, framing a striking face; sharp features that were softened by her shy, awkward expression.
“Wow.”
Her eyes flickered cautiously. “You like?”
Acutely aware of how intensely she was watching him, trying to gauge his reaction, he swallowed hard and tried to nod, calmly. Hell, he didn’t want to seem too eagre like some crazy teen and spook her. Still, talk about being knocked on your ass. He had to remind himself that it was only a façade, that she wasn’t human. She was…something else.
“You look…nice.” Good one Marlo, he chided himself. “I mean, you look good. Anyway, how did you do this?”
She held out her hands and arms in front of her and studied them. “Practise. I’ve been trying since I got here but your kind are, well, baffling. I gave up and simply tried to understand you, then to find a way to communicate. The language was very hard but I’m very determined. Once I had that I set about trying to get a body right but I couldn’t decide on a lot, so I just found one of your sleeping ones and copied her body. Her eyes were closed, so I had to look at her file, which helped.”
All that effort just to talk to him. An alien had done all of that to bridge that gap…and what had he done? He felt selfish. In his mind he hadn’t believed she was all that real, and maybe she still wasn’t. Whatever the truth, he figured he could try and learn about her. To understand.
“I didn’t mind. Your presence was enough. You didn’t have to do this just to make me happy,” he said quietly.
She laughed. “I didn’t do it for you – well, perhaps in the beginning. After a while it simply became a way to understand your kind. I’ve been travelling out amongst the stars and I’ve seen much, yet species such as yours, are rare. You intrigued me. Besides, this isn’t the first time I’ve done it.” A frown suddenly deepened her thick brows. “I don’t usually linger so long.”
Marlo had the sudden rush of fear that she’d go, that he’d be alone. “You’re going soon?”
She glanced up, her eyes quietly intense. “I don’t know. You’re different, Marlo.”
He sighed and turned his focus to the stars. “I’m not different. There’s others like me. I’m a clone. Disposable. I won’t even see this planet we’re going to. You know that? When we get there, I won’t be woken up. They’re going to dispose of me.”
“Dispose of you?”
“Kill, I suppose, though to them I’m not…human, so it’s okay.” He glanced back at her, to her questioning gaze. “You know my name but I don’t know yours. Do you…have one? Something I could call you?”
She seemed to want to ask more about what he was, about his impending disposal. His question, however, threw her enough that she frowned again, this time harder. The concept of having her own probably hadn’t occurred to her.
“I don’t have one. I didn’t think I needed one.”
“How about…Fran? That was the name of a planet we passed the day you arrived. Well, the full name is Frantoya, after an author I’ve been reading about.” His cheeks flushed red, so he quickly looked away. “You know what? Forget it. You pick your own name. My ideas are stupid.”
She didn’t say anything until she stood beside him, staring at the stars. “Fran. I like it.” She turned to him and took his hand, forcing him to look at her and her dizzyingly dark eyes. “My name is Fran.”
He and Fran spent their time together in the unfolding months. She accompanied him on all his rounds, asking questions about humanity; from art to science and everything in between. She grilled him on his opinions, then formulated her own theories. Sometimes she vanished into bursts of light and darted into a computer to get the information faster. When she came back she had another series of questions. When they worked in the garden she marvelled at the plants, at the work that went to keep them alive. That they produced fruit and vegetables that he ate. When the tomatoes finally came into season and ripened heavily on their lush vines she plucked them, holding them up with a radiant smile. He was kneeling in his own vegie patch nearby when he looked up and met her smile, returning it in kind.
His heart gave a rush and a nervous slam against his ribs. Whenever he was around her of late, when she smiled or declared something with interest, or took over some of his jobs – easing his work load quite a lot – he found himself feeling light. Happy. He found himself coming up with all the reasons to be around her, to find new things to teach her, or to talk to her about. They had a wealth of history to discuss or present problems with the ships to talk about. Talk of the future, however, was something that didn’t come up – and his time was running out. His year as keeper was coming to an end. He’d go into sleep but, by his calculations, he wouldn’t be woken again. The ship would’ve reached the new world by then.
When he was on the bridge by himself working on the day’s jobs, going over the ship’s course and any potential hazards, he found his mind drawing there. He didn’t want to go to sleep. He wanted…Well, he wanted to live, with her, to show her a real world full of life.
How the hell have you fallen in love with an alien? You’re just a stupid clone. You’re going to be minced up when the ship arrives. You’ll become the fertiliser for the plants.
“The ship is arriving in a hundred years,” she declared from behind him, her voice hollow.
He looked up slowly and saw the haunted look in her eyes. “Yes.”
“But going off the cycle of keepers you won’t be woken before you arrive, which means when the ship arrives you will-“
“Be disposed of,” he finished for. “I know.”
“And you want this?”
He stepped away from the console with a sigh. “It doesn’t matter what I want. Either I ignore protocol and stay awake, which the ship won’t permit – it’ll just wake the next one – or I go to sleep. It ends the same.”
She stared at the fringe of the bridge, her eyes too intense, too damn beautiful. With that one look she made him want to live, to stay, to see a sunrise and sunset, a real one. To feel the wind on his face, to stand by her side with their feet in the water. It wasn’t meant to be. He was a clone destined for disposal and she was an alien who would eventually move on.
“No, no, I won’t accept that,” she declared with a vehement hiss and burst into light, vanishing from the bridge.
It left him staring at the place she left behind. He felt empty and cold inside. “But I have.”
He didn’t see her again in the coming in his final days. She didn’t appear, not in flashes of light, nor flesh. Not to say goodbye or hello. He desperately wished to hear her voice, just one more time. That it might be something to cling to as he floated into that dark oblivion.
The day had come to wake the next keeper. He followed the prescribed procedure, waking his clone, who asked no questions. They’d done it many times before. Once the all-to-brief handover was done his clone helped him back into his own pod, hooking him into the life support. The process felt pointless. It wasn’t like he was waking up again but, given the unlikely chance the ship couldn’t land, he’d be woken – a stupid thing to cling to but he hoped it happened. That she’d be there at the end, waiting for him with that smile and that look in her eyes – that he was more than just another clone.
The pod closed around him and darkness tugged him under. The timeless oblivion consumed him; that is, until something else yanked him. From the darkness came a burst of light; slow, at first, like the unfurling of a new flower. Colour burst in bright strokes, taking shape before him.
White.
After a moment he realised it was a ceiling. Once his consciousness settled he looked about the plainly furnished room and saw the window. The blood rushed from him.
An ocean.
He sat up sharply and, by his own momentum of confusion and shock, fell out of the bed, tearing free from the lines running into him. The door hummed open suddenly. Footsteps clicked against the ground. Warm arms encircled around him, drawing his weak legs up. Energy ran through him, giving him strength. He looked up.
“Fran?”
She smiled down at him but said nothing. As she helped him up she slowly led him out of the room and down a tiny hall into a small living area, accompanied with a basic kitchen. It was one of the living pods that the ship had materials and schematics for. Yet, on shelves were books – copies, of course, of the ones they talked about. There were pictures of places he’d seen on files, places he’d talked about with excitement. Everywhere he looked he saw things he’d shared with her. Even on the kitchen bench was a bowl containing tomatoes. He looked at her but her gaze was on the front door. The sunlight that slanted in from the front windows cut across her eyes and he swore there were flecks of starlight in her eyes, a universe of stars reflected in them.
She led him on through the front door, which hummed up, and onto a plain white deck. His gaze tore from her and he let out a tremulous before him.
A vast ocean stretched before him. As far as the eye could see. And blazing above it, a sun with three moons hovering in the sky.
They’d got there safely…and he was alive.
“What happened to the others?”
“It was chaos when landing. So many awake. I tried to wake you all but I couldn’t do it,” she said softly, her voice thick with shame. “I tried to but they came so fast. I got to you as they were about to…and…I took you. Your whole pod. I hadn’t transported someone like that before and I had to wake you pretty quickly. You didn’t wake up and your vitals were poor. So, I stole a doctor and made them help you. We smuggled you back into the camp that had been built, made you one of them. The landing had scrambled a lot of data,” she said with a small, conspiratorial smile. “You got your help but you wouldn’t wake. Some of the others didn’t either. So, I built this place for us. For a time, you had a lot of equipment to keep you alive but, a little while ago, you began to improve. The doctor who saved you came and said you might wake up. I didn’t know if to believe him or not. Then you woke up.”
He digested all she said. The death of the clones felt strange. He had only met two of them, the one who woke him, the one who he woke. He hadn’t asked if they had their own names. Officially, they didn’t have names. He’d given himself his own name, despite protocol. Then, to know he’d landed, be made a human – a real one – and that Fran had stayed. She’d done it for him.
“You saved me,” he exhaled shakily. “You saved me.”
As he looked up, meeting those eyes which were shining with tears, he couldn’t say anymore – couldn’t move. Fran did though. Before he realised her mouth was on his. It was an awkward kiss, unsure and unpractised, but there was a tenderness. As she went to pull away he stood up and drew her closer, deepening the kiss. Passion roared between them, fire exploding through their bodies. Whatever they were – human, clone, alien – they’d found each other. He pulled away, their foreheads resting on each other’s. She gave him that smile and he fell for her all over again.
“I was lonely, Marlo. Lonely until you. So, no, you saved me.”
He laughed. “We saved each other.”
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