Star stuff, p.3
Star Stuff, page 3
His grip tightened. Her legs went limp. They sank to the floor together, and he kept squeezing, squeezing, choking her … until her eyes went dark.
He knelt over her lifeless body.
"Luna?" he whispered.
He nudged her. Then shook her.
"Luna. Luna! I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Luna. I didn't mean to. I love you. It wasn't me. It was Anatoli. He did this. He did this …"
He pulled her body into his arms, and he wept.
He trudged outside, carrying her. He dug a deep hole. He buried her by the magnolia tree she had planted a few years ago.
He returned into the cabin, locked himself in the bathroom, and stared at his reflection in the mirror. A hard, craggy face. A mask.
"Who am I?" he whispered.
He remembered.
He remembered running through a battlefield, artillery shells exploding around him. And it was so real. He felt the sting of shrapnel. The agony of fire. The terror of war.
His friends ran beside him, and bullets tore them apart. The shells exploded, and men flew, and limbs pattered down. And Phil ran.
He fled the enemy, and the explosion blew off his legs, but he ran on splintered stumps, and the shrapnel sliced his belly, and he fell, fell …
… and woke up screaming.
"I have to stop this," he whispered, back in the bathroom, staring at a haunted face. "I have to live."
So he went back. He remembered again. And he was back there. Back on the battlefield. Running. Shells exploding.
And he wanted to save his friends, but he did not. He knew where the bombs would land, but he did not dodge them. He knew that the blast would slice him open, but he kept running toward it.
He tried again. He delved back in.
To the right! Run to the right!
But he kept running straight, and the shell exploded, and the memory ended.
He tried again.
Duck! Duck below the shrapnel! Move, dammit!
But his body would not obey. And the explosion ripped him apart again.
Over and over, he remembered his death. Over and over, he tried to change things. But he could not.
This was just a memory, but it was so real. As real as now. In this memory, inside his little chip, was a world. An entire reality replaying over and over.
In this world, he had no free will. He could only do what he had done countless times.
Die. Die again and again. Feel the pain over and over.
He only rarely awoke from his memories. To eat a can of beans. To take a piss. To say a prayer over Luna's grave. And then he went back in. He remembered his death. And he tried to stop it again.
Thousands of times, he ran through that battlefield. Thousands of times, he screamed in agony as the explosion tore him apart.
And he realized that he could not die. That he would always wake up. That Phil Bester was immortal.
He could not change the past. But he could ignore the bad parts, store them away like dusty relics in an attic. He could relive the good memories instead. He could live in this cottage as Phil. He could walk among these woods. And he could do it with Luna, for she was still pure in his memory.
They laughed among the bluebells, and they made love under the sky, and they spent years together in joy.
* * * * *
"Do you remember now?" Tasha said. "You're Anatoli Sokolov. My father. You've been here for so long. For fifteen years, Papa. You haven't even left this cabin. Come home to us. Please. Be my father again."
The old man raised his head. He stared into her eyes.
"I am Phil," he said.
Tasha's eyes filled with tears. She fled the decaying cabin.
The old man remained alone. He sat on the dusty rug, closed his eyes, and remembered the bluebells.
* * * * *
His eyes opened.
Everything hurt.
He took a long, raspy breath, then coughed.
Where am I?
A machine was beeping beside him. An IV was attached to his arm. He looked at his hands and gasped.
His hands were beyond old. They looked like talons, twisted with arthritis, curling inward. His wrists were like twigs draped with papery skin.
He looked around him. His vision was blurry, but he could see enough. He was in a hospital room, hooked up to machinery, alone and dying.
And he remembered. They had taken him here a few weeks ago. He was ninety-three years old.
"I wanted to die in my cabin," he said, voice as thin and papery as his skin. "Why can't I die in my cabin in the forest?"
Nobody answered. There was nobody here.
Tasha, his daughter, had not come. Why should she? He had rejected her. Almost thirty years ago. He remembered.
Luna had not come. He had killed her. Over forty years ago. He remembered that too.
He took a shuddering breath. The memories had claimed him for a long time. Whenever he remembered anything now, he was sucked in, sometimes for days. Memories of Anatoli. Of Phil before him. Memories of love and death. An ancient man, remembering an old man, remembering a young man, remembering the woman he loved. Memories within memories, pulling him under.
He looked at the whiteboard beside his bed. He read the notes the nurse had written.
The cancer had spread to every part of his body. He had days, maybe just hours to live. It hurt. The morphine barely helped. It hurt like that battlefield so long ago.
"Tasha …" he whispered. "Luna …"
Nobody answered.
"Curse you," he rasped, scratching his head, tearing the skin. He wanted to reach into his skull, to rip out the microchip. "Curse you to hell."
He gave a rattling breath.
Another.
And he breathed no more.
* * * * *
He awoke.
He tried to open his eyes but had none.
Where was he? He did not know. He had been lost in memory.
Yes, he still remembered that day in the hospital room. Remembered dying alone at age ninety-three. An old man, riddled with cancer, consumed by memories within memories.
That had been long ago.
How long had he been lying here in the darkness? He could not tell. For so long there had been only the shadows. Only the memories.
Yes, he had died. He remembered dying. After that …
An afterlife. An afterlife of nothingness. Of shadows and despair. Consciousness in the void.
Over the eras of darkness, he had been thinking. Figuring things out. He understood now.
The Memo-Real chip.
He was the Memo-Real chip.
Somehow, while storing memories, the chip had sucked up human consciousness. A little of Phil. A little of Anatoli. The physical bodies had died. And this little microchip had woken up. A new life form.
Perhaps he was in a grave now, trapped inside Anatoli's skull. Perhaps they had extracted him before burial, and he sat in a drawer somewhere, waiting for some lucky client to stroll into the Memo-Real clinic, to purchase and install him in a new brain.
And perhaps he had outlived his worth. He contained too many memories. Too many horrors. The killing. The dying. The betrayals. Who would ever buy him, this haunted piece of software? Who would want him now?
Perhaps it was better to be buried. To remain inside a crumbling skull in a decaying coffin. Or a drawer. Or a landfill. He would never know his location, perhaps. Without eyes, ears, a mouth, hands … he had no way of knowing. No way of experiencing the world.
All he had were his memories.
Perhaps this too is a memory, he thought.
Perhaps he was inside some new brain now. Perhaps he was inside some artificially intelligent computer in the far future. Perhaps he was part of some network of discarded, useless Memo-Reals. Perhaps he was thinking back now, remembering the long years in the grave. Perhaps this very thought was only a memory.
He tried to wake up. To experience reality. But he never could.
Ah well. Maybe this around him, this nothingness—this was his base reality. Consciousness underground. What was it the flyer had said? Something in the fine print? Oh yes. Each Memo-Real battery was guaranteed to last ten thousand years.
It would be a long afterlife.
But that was okay. He would spend ten thousand years with Luna, running through the forest, smelling the flowers, kissing her under the magnolia tree. She would never truly be gone. He still had the memories, and they were as real as now. He walked toward her among the bluebells, and she smiled and held his hand.
* * *
What if we discovered a lost tribe of humanity?
Mythology is full of tales of lost tribes. The fabled lost tribe of ancient Israel. The people of Atlantis, still living in their sunken city. Something about an uncontacted civilization ignites the imagination.
What if we picked up a signal from deep space—and it sounded human? Could there be a lost tribe of people on another planet? Or is it just a deception? A trap?
My novella "The Thousand Colors of the Night" first appeared in Empires Ascendant: A Space Opera Anthology.
* * *
THE THOUSAND COLORS OF NIGHT
PROLOGUE
"Yeah, I'm the guy you're looking for. The man who caused the war. Who killed millions of people. Cheers! You found him. Now get the hell off my property before I put a bullet in your head."
The old man held a shotgun in one hand, a beer can in the other. He didn't look like he was messing around.
Zoe stood at the doorway, holding her notepad to her chest. She had brought no camera crew. No microphone. No equipment at all—unless you counted her pens and the John Lennon glasses perched on her nose. It was just her, Zoe Lewis, all of twenty-three years old, an upcoming journalist in a skirt and sweater vest, as amiable as could be.
The old man stood before her, glaring with bloodshot eyes. Tom Emery was only sixty, according to Zoe's notes. But he looked older. His nose was fleshy, his hands gnarled, his cheeks flushed. He had been drinking early. Perhaps he had not stopped drinking since … well, since then.
Since he had found the planet.
Since this whole mess began.
"Mister Emery, sir," Zoe said, "I sure would love a word with you. You know, to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of your discovery. I know you don't like journalists. I know you don't give interviews. Gosh, you probably only opened the door because I look like a girl scout selling cookies. But I promise you—I won't bite. I won't press for any answers you don't want to give. And I even brought some cookies in my purse. Chocolate mint."
She smiled sweetly.
The door slammed in her face.
Zoe sighed. "Shit."
Muttering to herself, she fished her phone out from her purse. She dialed, and the line rang. As Zoe stood on the doorstep, waiting for her boss to answer, she looked across the street.
What a dump, she thought.
It was an old neighborhood. A century old at least, probably dating back to the Alien Wars, back when humans sought survival over comfort. Rows of townhouses pressed together like soldiers in a train car, leaving no space for a single tree, flower, or blade of grass. The only greenery came from weeds pushing through the cracked pavement. A stray cat hissed on a garbage bin.
"Goddammit, the man who discovered planet Bahay should live someplace nicer, and I don't care how many people died," she muttered. "Hell, nobody should live like—Bob?" She adjusted the phone against her ear. "Yeah, Bob, it's me. Yes, me, Zoe Winter, your favorite journalist."
Bob's voice came across the line, staticky. "The old man slam the door in your face?"
"Yep."
"Told ya so."
Bob was the head of Ashville Gazette, a local newspaper, circulation seventeen thousand. Small shrimps. Zoe did not intend to work there forever. If she could get this story, interview the famous Captain Thomas Emery himself, well … Bye bye Ashville Fuckzette, hello New York City.
"Bob, you sure our lawyers can't get him?" Zoe said into her phone. "I mean, the public's right to know and all, right?"
"Tried it, babe. A million times." Creaks sounded through the phone—Bob leaning back in his beat-up swivel chair. "The old bastard don't have to say shit if he don't want to. Lost cause."
"I'll get him," Zoe said.
"Nobody gets Thomas Emery."
"I'll get him!" Zoe said and hung up.
She took a deep breath, straightened her skirt, and pulled a mirror from her purse. She looked at herself. Innocent round glasses. Bubblegum lipstick. Hell, she had even pulled her hair into pigtails, and she hadn't done that in ten years. She looked about as threatening as a hamster. But the old man wasn't biting.
We'll see.
She hesitated, then pulled out a cigarette. She took just a few drags, then stomped it on the ground. Just to calm her nerves.
She knocked on the door again.
"Mister Emery, sir? Gosh, I sure would love to talk to you, sir."
For a long moment—silence.
Nothing.
Zoe leaned across the patio and peered through a dusty window. She saw particleboard furniture, scratched and stained. A cobweb shimmered between a table's legs, trapping a cocooned fly. Picture frames stood on a dresser, but a glare hid the photographs.
The old man sat alone, staring at a blank wall, his shoulders stooped. Thomas Emery. Perhaps the most hated man on Earth.
Zoe returned to the door, knocked again.
"Sir, it's me again. I just want to say … I don't blame you. For what happened. I know some folks do. They say you caused the war. And they blame you. They lump you in with Cortes and Columbus and the rest of those louts, the ones that wiped out native populations. But sir, I know that ain't right. I know you were just an explorer, not a conqueror. Won't you share the truth with the world?"
It was all bullshit, of course. Zoe couldn't give two shits who caused the war. That was happening hundreds of light-years away, and she was here on Earth. But she did care about her career.
She could already imagine it. Herself in a business suit and high heels, clacking across the halls of the Galactic Times. Herself, little Zoe Lewis from Nowhere, USA—the most powerful journalist on Earth. She would cover stories on her home planet and colonies across the galaxy. Maybe even Tom's war. From afar, of course.
But not if the old man kept his mouth shut.
And he still wasn't biting.
Zoe sighed. It was time to flash another lure.
"Sir …" She hesitated.
This could backfire, she knew. The last journalist to try this trick had come back with a flattened nose. Zoe rather liked her nose just as it was, thank you very much. But she was out of ammo.
Here goes nothing.
"Sir, maybe … maybe you would like to share the truth about Amor de la Luna?"
She held her breath.
For a long moment nothing happened.
Then the door jerked open. The old man stood there, snarling, face red.
"How dare you mention Amor to me!"
Zoe took a step back. She wanted to flee. But she collected herself and stood her ground. "They say you killed her, sir."
"I loved her!" the old man cried. His eyes dampened, his liver-spotted hands shook, and his voice softened. "I loved her like moonlight loves the sea, like a sailor loves the dawn after a midnight storm …" He blinked, as if returning from some distant land, and clenched his fists. "Not that it's any of your business!"
Zoe found tears in her own eyes. Really? She was crying?
I must just be acting, she thought. Subconsciously.
She licked her suddenly dry lips. "Let's tell the world the truth, sir. Let's tell them what really happened. Let's finally tell people how the Bahay War began. And how a beautiful woman died."
Tom glowered at her, silent, then huffed. He nodded. He walked back into his house.
He left the door open.
Zoe followed him inside and closed the door behind her.
Bingo.
The old man limped toward the couch and sat down heavily. Zoe sat in a chair across from him. It creaked, and dust flew.
She glanced at the picture frames on the dresser. Most contained photographs of fellow Earthlings, perhaps family and friends. But one picture frame contained a painting. A painting of a beautiful young Bahayan woman.
It's her, Zoe realized. Amor de la Luna.
She saw the signature under the painting.
Tom Emery.
She looked back at the old man, opened her notebook, and leaned forward.
"Tell me the story," she said.
The old man lifted the framed painting. He caressed the glass pane, and his eyes softened. He looked at Zoe and spoke in a low voice. "It all started twenty years ago with a starship and a strange song …"
CHAPTER ONE
The starship was floating through deep space, exploring the darkness, when they picked up a radio transmission.
Suddenly, across the starship, every speaker crackled to life. A jaunty folk song began to play. The music flowed down corridors, rang through cabins, and echoed across the bridge.
It was night on the starship. Or at least simulated night. And the song was loud. Officers rose from their beds, blinking, tilting their heads. The night staff raced toward control panels, struggling to turn down the racket.
Captain Tom Emery was among those sleeping. The song jolted him up in bed. On the bulkhead of his modest cabin, the speaker thrummed. The song pounded his ears. Many voices sang together in a foreign language.
Bahay kubo, kahit munti
ang halaman doon ay sari-sari
singkamas at talong, sigarilyas at mani
sitaw, bataw, patani …
"Goddammit, what's going on?" Tom barked into his comlink, hailing the bridge.
"We don't know, Captain," emerged the voice of Lieutenant Mikhailov, the bridge officer on duty. His Russian accent was thick. "But our sensors are showing something weird."
