Asphodel

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

As a teenager, going through my Emo-girl phase, I had spent so many nights in my room, looking up at the stars and screaming as quietly as I could with all of my pent-up teenage angst.

Now, drifting through the same space I watched from Earth, my robot body doesn’t even have a mouth to scream from.

I guess this would be ironic if such a thing still existed.

The legs on my robot body are starting to creak and shudder every few steps. Repairs would take a few days, which would mean a few days out of the body and into the AI system of the ship. And the more time I spend out of a humanoid body—even a robot one—is more time to drift farther and farther from whatever sense of human-ness I have left.

Of course, that drift is inevitable. I knew that well before I signed up. There will still come a time in the future when I finally make the transition to a full AI program, and whatever “human” aspect my consciousness had will finally unravel and dissipate into the emptiness of space. But I’m not quite ready to let go.

Not yet. Not before the kids are ready for their new planet.

I walk my robot body towards the window near the loading deck. This is one of only two actual windows on the ship. When it comes to deep space travel, translucent windows for purely aesthetic purposes are too much of a design liability to bother with. There are, of course, walls elsewhere in the ship designed to give a holographic rendering of the scene outside the ship. What’s more, these screens have been designed to display complex and high-definition visuals of the vast clusters of stars, planets, galaxies, nebulae, and so on that one would be able to see with better eyes than those that evolved in the human body. Visual renderings of what one could see beyond the spectrum of visible light. Manifestations of infrared, ultraviolet, and gamma rays.

And, in my potential AI form, I know I could send myself flying through those stars, and make myself as big as the holographic model of the universe itself. Become one with the universe, at least as it exists in the petabytes of memory in the ship’s computers.

But I would no longer be human.

Not that I am now, but still.

I stand my robot body in front of the window. Here, without the benefit of the ship’s computerized visuals, I can see only blackness. I have my robot eyes adjusted to the human-eye setting. I can see nothing more than visible light. And, beyond the window, I can see only blackness. A deep, dark void unbroken by the hint of a flicker of a potential star. In fact, in my robot form, the blackness is even more absolute. From what I can recall, a human eye, with its crude, imperfect biological machinery, would at least occasionally break the blackness with random floaters of organic material drifting through the eye’s natural jelly, phantasmagoric flecks of random light patterns caused by misfirings of neural circuits. But my perfectly engineered robot eyes have nothing but digital clarity. And so they show me nothing but perfect blackness beyond my small window.

“Genevieve,” a computerized voice calls from the ship’s speakers. I picture myself cringing, though, of course, my robot head and torso don’t respond.

“Yes?” I say through the speaker where the mouth would be on my robot body. The voice that comes out is similar to the voice that came from my human body, though the sound systems that had been set up in my robot head are less cable to replicate the slight rasp that I recall tinging the edges of my human voice. The rasp that, I always thought, gave my voice a deeper, sexier, more intriguing, and unique tone.

Or, at least as far as I can remember.

“Genevieve,” he repeats. Josiah always repeats my name when I respond to him. Even when he was also human. “I had some new ideas for next term’s lessons.”

“Yes, sir,” I say. If I still had human eyes I would roll them. Every single new term Josiah comes up with “revisions” to the lesson plans for the kids. Usually revolving around himself. Still, I’m not in a position to argue with him. Especially not now.

“How about this?” his voice says through the speakers. “A history of late capitalism through the prism of digital economics. The importance of cryptocurrency in the decline of manufacturing economies across the industrialized world. We could discuss the use of AI-consciousness in revolutionizing productivity in comparison to the Industrial Revolution of the early 19th Century. Is there anything there?”

“Of course, sir,” I say.

“Josiah, please,” he says. I don’t respond. Despite his little rituals of humility, I long ago learned how he feels about his assistants calling him by his first name. “Anyway, I think the kids will benefit from that when we get to Asphodel.”

“Yes, sir,” I say.

“Josiah,” he says. Then the speakers go silent again.

For the past few time cycles, Josiah has spent all of his time in the AI space. He does still have a humanoid robot, like mine, that he could inhabit. But it’s been sitting in storage for who knows how long, while Josiah’s consciousness has merged with the ship’s software to explore whatever a trillionaire’s consciousness would want to explore in an infinite digital space. Not that I’m complaining, of course. After all, the more time he spends in the digital ether, the more time my little robot self has alone.

I walk through the inner corridors of the ship’s main deck, toward the housing and educational units. The ship’s 36-hour time cycle corresponds to twelve hours of rest and fourteen hours of education for the kids. The older ones have more time to explore the history of Earth and humanity in virtual reality simulators. The infants, though, require a bit more structure.

As the time cycle turns to the start of a new lesson period I move towards the onboard sound system in the educational unit. The process of playing the records could be automated, but I always preferred to do it by hand. Or, at least, a robot hand. Anything to make me feel useful.

I hit the play button, and within a second a female voice comes through the speakers echoing through the educational unit.

“HELLO,” the voice says. The recording is the same as every day, and if I still had lips I would be moving them along with the words.

“YOU ARE A HUMAN BEING. HUMAN BEINGS COME FROM THE PLANET EARTH. YOU ARE NOT ON EARTH. YOU ARE ON AN INTERSTELLAR CRAFT. YOU ARE GOING TO THE PLANET ASPHODEL.”

The message will repeat itself several times. This is mainly for the benefit of the youngest kids who had only recently emerged from their incubation pods. Based on what I had been told, the human consciousness had evolved to respond with less stress to a female voice than a male one. To the extent that the kids were meant to retain as many of their human faculties as possible on their new planet, the program heads had wanted to ensure both limited stress and limited neural intervention among the first generation of human Asphodelians. Still, I had also mistrusted the female voice that came through the speakers on the program. She sounded pleasant enough but in a purely artificial way. Nothing human encircled the soft, too-perfect tones of her voice. Not imperfections, sudden intakes of breath. Not quivers of a human lip or hint of phlegm caught in the windpipe. Nothing imperfectly human for the kids to grab onto and carry onwards to their new planet.

Nothing like the rasp that I had in my human voice, I think.

From the pods elsewhere in the educational unit, a few of the kids’ bodies begin to stir. The elder ones were likely already entertaining themselves with their preferred edutainment programs included in the virtual reality at their disposal. But the youngest, only recently “hatched” from their incubation pods, needed a more structured routine. A long time ago, several Earth years, as far as I could tell, back before we left Earth, a program head had explained as best he could to me the extent of their neural engineering on the unborn brains of the embryos they were going to send into space with my and Josiah’s uploaded consciousnesses.

I had nodded my human head, but never really bothered to try and understand the technical aspects of it all.

I’m just a rich guy’s assistant, I always told myself.

I never bothered to learn whose genetic material the embryos had been spawned from. I always just assumed it was some upper-class elites who had bought their way to jerking off for the future of humanity. Just like Josiah would have, if he hadn’t gotten the arguably superior option of uploading his consciousness to an AI and serving as superintendent for the new generation’s education.

And when I had the option to do the same, if only to carry on in my assistant role?

Well, better than getting stuck on Earth, I thought at the time. Besides, neither of us have human bodies anymore, I probably won’t have to get him any more soy mocha Frappuccinos.

Though, I confess, I do miss that from time to time.

From the younger pods, my robotic sensors inform me of an increase in bodily movement. In my field of vision, I bring up the vital signs of each of the younger humans still incubating in the pods. Each child’s neural readings appear on a neat table floating in the air in my field of vision, transposed above the pods where their physical bodies are suspended. The readings show a slight increase in stress and anxiety among a few of the younger kids. Nothing that unusual, especially when the children first emerge into their new consciousness without any clear stimulation.

“Don’t worry kids,” I say out loud, though none of them could hear me. “How about some music to ease the tension?”

I move my robotic fingers towards the digital control panel for the AV interface on the kids’ programming. “You guys are going to be writing so much music of your own when you get to your new planet. But, for the time being, why don’t we listen to some classics from Earth?”

The ship’s programming contains a library of 387,245,094 recordings. I never particularly enjoyed knowing the exact number—that was always a stark reminder of the parts of my mind that were all computer. But, regardless, the library supposedly contains every single song or piece of music that had ever been written back on Earth. But, of course, I had limited my listening habits to only a few dozen. And, by extension, those few dozen were what the kids listened to as well.

“Here’s one from about a century before I was born,” I say. “I made a few moderations to the recording. You might like it.”

I hit the play button on the display and listened as the soft, slow piano notes streamed through the speakers into the small space of the educational unit. After the slow, sad intro, a male voice appears.

You light the fire.

I’ll place the flowers in the vase

That you bought

Today.

Staring at the fire

For hours and hours

While I listen to you

Play your love songs

All night long

For me

Only for me.

My mother had sung that song to me when I was a young girl, I remember. She never quite got the lyrics in the right order, but the softness of her voice and the gentle accompaniment of the a cappella silence around them suggested just as much. For that version, I had to use my free time over the past several time cycles to play around with the key a bit. The original key of A was now a wayward and somber B minor. The voice that would have been soft but clear in the original recording was now far off and muted somewhat as if calling to the listener from across a misty, forgotten sea.

“You guys like that?” I say to the pods. “I know I’ve played that one a few times before, but I think it’s pretty lovely.”

As always, I get nothing in the way of a response. But I check the chart of each of the kids’ neurological readings. It seems, that, as the music plays, they relax a bit. Their serotonin levels increase, at least.

I picture myself smiling, though nothing in my robotic face moves at all. But my internal smile is abruptly smacked off of my internal face by Josiah’s voice suddenly cutting into the ship speakers again.

“Genevieve,” he says.

My robot body does not physically react to surprise in the way a human body would. But, I still make too quick of a turn on my out-of-sorts leg and stumble a bit before catching my center of balance again.

“Uh, yes—yes, sir?”

“Genevieve, I sent you a file of me from the hologram. It’s me skiing down Mons Olympus on Mars. You remember Mars, right? From our old solar system?”

“Yes, sir, I—”

“Mons Olympus was the highest mountain in that solar system at least. Of course, we’ve since passed dozens of planets with significantly higher mountains on their surface, but I was in a bit of a nostalgic mood for ‘home,’ as it were. Not that our species is from Mars. But we were neighbors. You get what I’m saying?”

“Yes, sir, of course—”

“Anyway, could you file that into my social media portfolio? I think the kids will get a kick out of it when they get old enough to see it. Also, I wrote some new music. Here’s the file, make sure you play it for them when you get the chance.”

I cringe internal but keep my robotic voice nice and pleasant. “Yes, sir.”

“Oh, by the way,” he cuts in. “You been keeping track of the ship logs?”

I pause. The question makes little sense in the context of my job description. Though, that never stopped Josiah before.

“No—I admit I don’t understand—”

“That star we’re passing,” he interrupts. “Spectral type F. White giant, I think. We’re supposed to max out our distance at 92.3 million kilometers. Something about using its gravity as a slingshot towards Asphodel. The navigational program has all the information, from the chat I just had with them. Anyway, I got a notification about—something about solar flares from the star’s surface?”

If I had shifted my consciousness to its full AI capacity I know I would have a much better chance of knowing what he’s talking about. But my wonderfully limited human consciousness was never all that good with math-type stuff.

“It—is that a question?”

“Huh?” he says. From experience, I get the clear sense that he’s already moved on to something else. Even in his human form, he could never keep hold of one thought at once. It’s how I made my first trillion, he always liked to say. And now that his consciousness has been uploaded into a near-infinite AI interface…

“Oh, well,” he continues. “I don’t know. Just keep an eye on it, if you’re going to be out and about here in the physical world. I have an appointment to go hang-gliding through Jupiter in the hologram interface that I’d like to keep, so I thought you could just make sure everything’s in tip-top shape. The ship’s supposed to be protected from solar flares anyway, so there shouldn’t be any issue. I just told the navigational and engineering programs to go to you in case they need anything since I’ll be engaged.

“Oh, okay, well…”

“Thanks, bye!” His voice cuts out and leaves nothing but the remixed song that’s still playing through the speakers.

Whenever I made an involuntary sigh, my AI-neural link interprets that as a feedback loop and sends a shrill electronic whine through the speaks on my robot face. That sound once again cut through the music playing in the educational wing of the ship. I had interacted with the navigational and engineering interfaces a few times thus far in our journey but never got much out of their blunt and technical lingo.

“Uh, navigation?” I say. I don’t have to say it, of course, since my brain still has a backchannel connection to the ship’s computer even in humanoid form. Still, the force of habit.

The navigational interface appears superimposed on my vision of the educational wing.

“What may I assist you with?” the voice says. It’s strangely foreign and androgynous, in a way that always seemed less human than it could be. This has always made me a bit uncomfortable, but I always soldiered through.

“Uh, yes, well—Mr. Josiah Bach just told me something about solar flares from the star we’re approaching. He wanted me to check in and make sure that these don’t pose a risk to the ship.”

“Processing…We are currently on a course of approach to Star Omicron-52. We are currently at a distance of 105,657,938 kilometers. We are traveling at a 47-degree angle at a speed of…”

“Yes, yes,” I interrupt. “I mean, what information is there about these solar flares?”

“Solar flare activity detected on the stellar surface,” the navigational interface says. “Currently, we detect an electromagnetic radiation output of 136.57 keV. This indicates moderate to significant solar flare activity.”

“I see,” I say. “And is this a threat to the ship?”

“Negative,” the voice says. “This ship is equipped with electromagnetic shields that have been rated as effective against up to 800 keV of electromagnetic radiation.”

“I see,” I say. “So, this is not an issue at all?”

“I calculate a 93.4% chance of passing by star Omicron-52 without sustaining damage that would jeopardize the remainder of the mission.”

In my mind, I blink my eyes, though the cameras in front of my face do nothing. In front of me, the navigational interface displays the number that represents our chance of survival by blinking read letters in the air in front of me.

“Only 93.4%?” I say.

“Correct.”

“Okay…” I know that I have oceans of resources to better understand all of this waiting for me in my fully-integrated AI form. But, my lifetime of being a trillionaire’s assistant has left me with an inherent reflex to take a human tone in situations like this. “Why were we not informed of this beforehand?”

“Mr. Josiah Bach was informed presently,” the voice says. “He is the primary contact of this ship.”

“I see. And why was this not brought to our—to his attention earlier?”

“Based upon the initial navigational calculations that were made on Earth, our course would not take us into such proximity to star Omicron-52. However, these calculations proved inadequate as we approached Omicron-52’s gravitational field. I have revised the calculations to adequately utilize Omicron-52’s gravitational effect for our course to the planet Asphodel. This new course will be 37.92% more efficient in ensuring our arrival at Asphodel. However, this will also take us closer to the stellar surface of Omicron-52. Therefore, the ship is in greater danger of electromagnetic interference from solar flares.”

At times like this, the strange, automated sense of order in my brain was, ironically, more distracting than anything. In my old, biological, imperfect human brain, the disordered and panicked thoughts that I’d get in a situation like this ended up becoming part of the problem-solving process. Almost like a comfort blanket, it became so familiar. But once my consciousness got uploaded to an AI program, the perfect clarity was too alien to work its way to a solution. I shook my robot head, though I knew the navigational interface wouldn’t react to this in any way.

“So, is there, like, something I should be doing?” I ask.

“You may manually adjust our course as per your preferred specifications,” the navigational voice says. “However, I will advise you that even a slight alteration in our current trajectory will result in either the ship entering the direct gravitational pull of Omicron-52—which would result in its destruction—or result in the ship deviating from its course and failing to reach the Planet Asphodel as originally intended.”

“I see,” I say. “So, that’s a no.”

“I may offer you a visual representation of the surface of Omicron-52 if you would like,” the voice says. “The holographic interface can display a representation of the stellar surface in the categories of visible light, ultraviolet light, thermal energy, radio waves—”

“That’s fine,” I interrupt. “Uh, how about just visible light?”

“Affirmative,” the voice says.

Almost instantly, the blank wall in front of me comes to life in a bright display of vibrant colors. The scene is as it would be looking out the front of the ship, the black expanse of space extending outward into eternity. Directly in front is the pulsing curvature of the massive star, its surface shimmering with fire and energy as it burned out a hot white glow that shimmered across the space around it. I watch in silent wonder for a few seconds. Then, without warning, a sudden burst of burning gas erupts from the surface of the star. It seems almost liquid in its formation, with thin whispers of plasma whipping through the solar winds and expanding in every direction like a volcano.

“Was that a solar flare?” I ask.

“Affirmative,” the navigational voice says. “Our readings show an energy output of 234.87 keV. This is well within the safety rating of the ship’s outer hull.”

“Well, that’s good, I suppose.”

“Would you like to keep the visuals in visible light, or switch to another visual category? The cameras in your current humanoid model are capable of visualizing electromagnetic radiation up to and including gamma rays.”

“Yes, well, I guess I’d like to keep a bit of my humanity intact, not that you’d understand, of course, but…”

And then, from the deepest wells of the star in front of us, comes the blast. A flare explodes outward from the surface without warming, erupting with ten or twenty times the fury of the first. The force of the blast sends visible tidal waves rippling in all directions across the star’s surface, while the cone of the blast ascends outward into space, carrying fire and energy quantities too vast for even my AI consciousness to calculate.

“What—” I begin. Then:

“Our readings show an energy output of 2.65 meV. This energy is approaching the ship at 184,957.078 kilometers per second. This energy output exceeds the maximum safety rating of the ship’s hull by 1.80 meV…”

“Wait, what?” I try to say.

And then, the alarm begins to sound. The sudden shrill, explosive wail blasts out from every wall with military urgency. On the wall in front of me, the projected image of the surface of the star is replaced with a flashing red warning screen that informs me that the system has experienced a critical failure.

“Hold on, wait,” I begin. Then, I see myself falling. The wiring in my robotic legs and torso suddenly fails with the electromagnetic onslaught. And, in the same instance, I feel the gamma rays blasting through my consciousness, the nanometers of quantum cables that held what of me was once human. For one-millionth of a second, I can feel it touch me, take me, carry me away from my robot body, and into a cosmic fusion of universe and machine.

And then, darkness.

•

Come to me now

(come to me now)

And rest your head for just five minutes

Everything is done

Such a cozy room

(such a cozy room)

The windows are illuminated

By the evening

Sunshine through them

Fiery gems

For you

Only for you

The voice spirals through the darkness. Caught in a loop, repeated and evolving in melodic progressions. Into eternity. The voice of God.

The first thing I remember is how I was once a human, and, in that capacity, the vast quantities of time that had passed would have driven me insane.

But now, in my conscious state, I am saner than any human on Earth could ever hope to be.

I am aware of two robot hands. One has malfunctioned, but the other works adequately for my purposes. I push it down on the solid space where it rests and pushes my robot frame into a sitting position. It has the form of “upright” though there is no “up” or “down” in the zero-gravity of my surrounding environment.

Through the speakers that are both outside my body and inside my consciousness, the song continues.

Our house

Is a very very very fine house.

With two cats in the yard

Life used to be so hard

Now everything is easy ‘cause of you…

“Why am I awake?” I ask out loud through the speaks on my face.

In my consciousness, the answer comes almost instantaneous.

We are approaching the planet Asphodel.

“What is Asphodel?” I ask myself.

My inner voice responds. The fourth planet in the orbit of the star Gamma-47. Chosen for its proximity to the size, gravity, and atmosphere of the planet Earth. Believed to be inhabitable for human lifeforms. Named for the Asphodel Meadows of the mythology of the Greeks, an ancient race of humans who lived approximately 3,500 years before you left Earth. In the mythology of the Greeks, the Asphodel Meadows was found in the afterlife, the destination for the ordinary souls deemed neither malevolent enough to suffer in the realm of Tartarus, nor virtuous enough to enter the Elysian fields, but rather…

The voice is my own, as far as I can tell, but not human. Digital, machine-like, perfect in its knowledge and yet impossibly limited in its soulless processing.

“And who am I?” I interrupt.

Silence.

“What is Earth?” I ask. “What happened to it?”

Silence. In the space where I would sense the AI voice to which I am irreparably attached, I can sense, though not hear, a single word.

ERROR.

“If I was once a human,” I ask. “What happened to the others?”

ERROR.

“Why are we going to Asphodel?”

A few splotches of information in the form of digital images popped up in my consciousness. War, famine, disease. Destroyed atmospheres, land rendered inhospitable to human life. Millions of refugees. Governments crumbling. A dark brown, burning sky. The air going into my body. Going into my…LUNGS…Somehow burning inside, burning in a way that I can feel.

And then:

ERROR.

“The solar flare,” I say out loud. To whom I don’t know. “It damaged my CPU.”

I shake my robotic head. Then, without warning, another voice appears through the speakers.

“Genevieve,” it says.

Is that me? Am I Genevieve?

“Josiah?” I ask out loud. The name comes from somewhere hidden that I can’t see. But it seems to fit. “Josiah, are you there?” Is that my name? Genevieve?

“Genevieve,” the voice repeats. The voice is male but stripped of any human affectation. “Genevieve. Genevieve. Genevieve.”

“What?” I ask. I try to amplify my tone, but the voice that comes out of my robotic speaker-mouth is as emotionless and machine-like as always. “What is it?”

“Genevieve. Genevieve. Genevieve.”

Over and over again.

That’s all that’s left of him.

“Uh, command?” I ask. I don’t know why this comes into my consciousness, but it seems to fit. Josiah’s voice automatically cuts out and a new one comes in.

“Yes?” it asks.

“Show me the scene outside the ship.”

“Holographic program has sustained critical damage,” it says. “Projected images are not possible at this time.”

In my mind, I feel a single word appear. Sigh.

I have no idea what this means.

There’s a window, I think.

I push off from the side of the ship in zero gravity and drift my robotic body over to the storage hold. The boxes and packages float around in a lazy meandering. I move my one good arm towards a handle and pull myself to the single, small, circular window that looks out to the space outside the ship.

There, encompassing almost the entire scene is the planet. The soft curvature of the surface, the white clouds drifting across the highest levels of its atmosphere. The blueness of vast oceans appears underneath the cloud cover. The green and yellow the dry land spangled across the surface. The golden glow of the light from its sun reflects across the surface.

Asphodel, I think.

A voice comes through the speakers once more. “Now entering geosynchronous orbit,” it says. “Preparing landing craft.”

“For the kids?” I say out loud. I don’t know where this comes from.

I bring my robotic body over to the educational wing. Despite the damage from the solar flare, I can see the vital signs from the kids still displayed as they always were. Relaxed, content, at peace.

Ready to restart the human race on Asphodel.

And me their sole guide. The last traces of humanity left.

Whatever humanity is left in me.