Upon Islands of Time

The ship was indistinguishable from space. Not that it was black, but there was nothing to illuminate it. No stars in the background to at least give it an outline, not even the shiny smudge of a far-away galaxy. There was no way to see the ship, and therefore no way to tell whether it was moving. Then again, there was no one to look for the ship in the first place, at least there wasn’t likely to be. Still, there was a chance, however infinitesimal–so no lights shone from the gigantic specimen. In fact, no light wave would illuminate the ship. It was, for all intents and purposes, invisible, flying on through the nothingness that remained.

Year 100,892 S.D. (Since Departure)

Saudade, Void Space

There’s nothing left out there. There used to be stars, planets, galaxies, moons, asteroids, light, contrast, but there’s nothing now. Once upon a time, our distant ancestors—occupiers of this universe in a time beyond conception—could look back in time simply by observing light that left stars billions of years before. But now those stars are gone. Either they all fled away faster than light a long time ago, existing beyond sight, or they are all truly dead—black shells, corpses of the fiery orbs that began and ended life infinitely throughout the age of the universe.

The black room was created by those who built this ship when the hope that there would be anything to see out there hadn’t quite died. Entrance is only allowed through light locks so that visitors can stare out at what is left out there unhindered, but there’s nothing left out there. There’s nothing to see through the gigantic window that encompasses the outer wall of the room and curves around the edge of the ship. But I still come here every day.

Every day, as if time still has a meaning. The days inside the ship are held to the measure of the time it took some far distant, long non-existent planet, to rotate fully. Now we measure our lives by standards that exist entirely inside our heads. I live inside a tomb of denial. Those around me have hope, but I never had any. If there was hope, the ancestors would never have given up immortality. But I still come here every day.

How is it that those with hope rarely come to the most hopeful place in the ship?

Likely, it is because if they did, their hope would be sucked away by the vast nothingness, the suffocating black. I suppose I come here for reality, to get away from the fantasy that we all live in. I don’t see the point, and I’d rather face reality than pretend away my problems. We are not alive if we cannot evolve, and therefore we died a long time ago. But I still come here every day.

Year 100,862 S.D.

Saudade, Void Space

The girl crawled up the grassy hill on her belly, inching herself along with her arms and legs until she could just see over the edge and down into the valley. The giant, almost perfectly circular bowl that the hills encased cradled a glistening circle of blue in its center. Tendrils of black smoke rose from countless darkened areas surrounding the lake, rising to gather in the center of the sky and obscuring the lands far above.

She watched, fascinated as flashes of colorful light flew across the valley, hitting little figures here and there. Some crumpled to the ground, some just disappeared, and some flew up high, high into the sky, before floating down lazily. The ground beneath her vibrated with the tramping of many feet and the concussions of explosions. Giant balls of color ballooned out of nowhere, causing Simyala to keep her eyes squinted permanently. She waited feverishly as the vibrations came through the ground and hit her like a shock just a moment later. As the hours passed, the rod of light running through the center of the sky inched towards twilight, helped along by the growing circle of smoke around it. The land lost its sharpness, but still, she watched. She was so involved in the show below her that she didn’t feel the footsteps approaching behind her.

Something wrapped around her ankles and pulled her back, flipping her onto her back as it did so. She opened her mouth, but a hand closed over it. Upon seeing the face that the hand belonged to, Simyala allowed herself to be lifted up and carried away down the hill. Her head rested on a broad shoulder and she stared up the hill, watching the glow of a myriad of colors at the rim fade and feeling each footfall and explosion as lighter and lighter vibrations. Finally, when they’d entered a patch of trees, she let her guard down and allowed the flood of information she’d been holding back into her mind.

How many times have I told you, Simyala? It’s too dangerous, was the most recent message from her father, but there was a backlog of other messages pushing up against it that she continued to ignore.

I want to watch. I’d never go down there.

And what if they came up to you?

Simyala had no answer for that, so she just leaned back so she could see her father as he was walking. I’m sorry, Adad. There was no mistaking the look in his eyes as he received the thought—he just kissed her on the brow, his beard tickling her forehead and making her giggle.

The house was little more than a modern cabin tucked in at the edge of a copse of oaks with a few aspens sprinkled throughout. The village proper began a few hundred feet away, just scattered houses with no real rhyme or reason to their placement, conglomerating eventually into some sort of semblance of sense.

Down the beaten dirt path through the bedraggled grass her father carried her. The door to the house slid open as they approached and Dalin set her down on the couch. He gave her a long look that Simyala could not figure, but she did not try to hear the thought behind it. Her father deserved some things to himself. Kissing her on the brow again, he went into the kitchen leaving Simyala sitting there, her feet dangling off the edge, back straight, feeling his footsteps come up through the floor and the furniture beneath her.

When he returned, he held a plate with a sandwich in each hand. He sat on the couch’s adjacent arm and Simyala swung her legs around so that she faced the same square slab of wood that served as a table. What is it? She asked, knowing the answer.

Your favorite.

Simyala grabbed the sandwich and took a large bite. The bread was thicker than she was used to and she had to focus hard to chew enough to get the bite down. Her father smiled and took a bite of his own sandwich. The two ate in silence, Simyala finishing long before her father. When she was done, she scooted herself next to her father and lay back on the pillows, her feet dangling off the edge of the couch. She waited patiently for him to finish eating, her eyes jumping around the room a million times a second, taking in every detail. Her father’s boots sat slightly to the left of where they usually were by the door, a bit of liquid glistened in droplets forming a circle on a glass coaster on the dining table on the other side of the room, and one of the books on the large bookshelf had moved over one from where it had been that morning. The last two made sense to Simyala, but her eyes kept darting back to the boots. Her father was still wearing the boots he’d been wearing when he came to get her from the hill, but the boots in the corner were definitely slightly off from where they’d been that morning, and one of the laces was on the ground, where earlier it had ended an inch above the ground.

Adad, where did you go today?

Her father looked at her quizzically through a mouth full of food, chewing slowly. Nothing gets past you does it? I went to the second level, your uncle, Andropov, needed my help with something.

With what?

This time Dalin finished chewing before his thoughts entered her mind. The Western Monarch’s death has created some trouble. They need someone to take over for him, but although many people want the position, no one actually knows how to do it. The other three monarchs are forbidding a new Western posting until they have had time to judge who they want to train to replace him.

What is the problem with that?

Ah, the sound of the sigh in her mind made Simyala feel her father’s exasperation over the topic. Simi, the monarchs are not supposed to choose their own members. It is the people’s responsibility to elect their own monarchs. If it weren’t, then the monarchs would not be of the people, they would be removed from us.

But the monarchs don’t actually do anything, Adad. The factions fight throughout the quadrants no matter who the monarchs are, and they don’t seem to do anything to try and stop that.

Dalin smiled. Your gift, Simyala, makes you wise beyond your years.

Simyala frowned and looked away. She did not think of it as a gift, but this thought escaped her usually tightly controlled thoughts as evidenced by her father’s hand on her arm.

Gift is the only word for it.

I don’t like the fact that others can’t have secrets from me, thought Simyala.

Many would wish for the power to see into others’ minds.

People cannot be themselves when they are watching their thoughts.

Many would say just the opposite, said Dalin.

Simyala shook her head emphatically. Adad, people fear their thoughts, and the one comfort they have is that they are theirs alone to deal with. Within the safety of their minds, they can choose to craft how they present themselves to the world, how they want to be, and who they aspire to be, not what their darkest thoughts make them fear they are. When they know what I can do, their minds become twisted and fearful.

Dalin’s face was somber now. He put a hand under her chin and lifted her head so she could see his pale blue eyes. Like I said, beyond your years. He let her go but she remained staring up at him. What do you think would happen to the monarchs if the factions stopped fighting? he asked.

Simyala considered her father, tracing the subtle but wise lines of his face with her eyes, feeling the steady beat of his heart through the couch and even the reverberations of his breaths. People would have more time to focus on what the monarchs do, or don’t do.

Dalin nodded. Precisely.

Dalin ruffled her hair and then picked up their plates and took them into the kitchen.

All of a sudden Simyala’s eyelids began to droop. She hadn’t realized how tired watching the factions had made her. She let her eyes fall closed, but a moment later she felt her father’s footsteps and his presence above him. She opened her eyes and looked up at him questioningly.

Are you too tired to go on an adventure with me?

She jumped up in answer, vigorously rubbing her eyes.

Change into warmer clothes and your other boots.

Simyala’s eyes widened.

Dalin just nodded in response and grabbed his own boots by the door and began lacing them up.

Simyala darted into her room. Her boots were at the back of her closet, almost hidden in the shadows from lack of use. She grabbed them and pulled one on excitedly before remembering the instruction to put on warmer clothes. She kicked the boot off and traded her grass-stained yellow dress for warm blue pants, a shirt, and a quilted, shiny red jacket. Once dressed she hurriedly laced up her boots and met her father at the front door where he stood waiting for her in a similar black quilted coat. He pointed down at her boots. Simyala looked down; in her excitement, she had laced one up incorrectly. She bent over, corrected it impatiently, then reached for the door, but Dalin’s hand grabbed hers. He looked at her expectantly.

Stay close to you, Simyala thought. Lift my feet up and take careful steps. Don’t touch the custodians. Listen and obey.

And? Asked Dalin.

Don’t let the rules take all the fun out of it.

Dalin grinned. Let’s go.

They certainly did their best, Simyala thought to herself as she let herself out the door followed by her father.

The streets were empty. The other people in the village could not feel the subtle vibrations that vibrated in Simyala’s bones as the explosions of the faction battle continued in the next valley over, but the sounds that were no more than phantoms to her kept them off the streets. Her father grimaced, the explosions, screams, and other unholy sounds affecting him, chilling his heart. At times he tried to hide such feelings from her, but either he could not or did not want to, for Simyala felt all this emanating from him inside her head as they walked briskly to the town center. The light bar high above was dim, the shadows between the houses deep and dark.

The pyramid loomed from behind a corner, its gradual sides climbing three stories into the sky, two more than any other building in the town. What little light still emanated from the light bar, blurring the spaces between objects, seemed to have no effect on the pyramid. It seemed to suck in any light, looking more like a hole in the fabric of space and time than an actual structure.

Dalin swung the pyramid’s slanted door outward and gestured for Simyala to enter first. He followed, looking nervously around the empty square before closing the door. What they were doing was not wrong, but very few people liked to go to the outer levels, and those who did were seen as something of a pariah. Strips of pale blue light running up the junctions of the four sides of the pyramid cast the rather stark room in a dull glow.

Simyala’s face was flushed, even the brief walk to the center of town had made her hot, but it was too late to take off her jacket now. Even as her cheeks burned, the temperature dropped markedly the minute she stepped inside.

As the only thing in the middle of the pyramid, and made of solid glass, the cylinder looked smaller than it really was. Simyala followed her father to it. It scanned him, registered her, and the door slid open. A slight buzzing sound arose from her boot the minute it touched the floor of the elevator, and each following step took a little extra effort.

The elevator dropped and Simyala’s stomach jumped into her throat while her feet remained firmly locked on the floor. She giggled as her arms rose, unbidden, into the air and her whole body became weightless. If only she could just unclick from the floor and truly float, but one look at her father told her the answer to that. Listen and obey. Still, she felt giddy as she pulled her arms down and then watched them float up again.

Sliding to a stop, the elevator’s doors opened smoothly onto a blue-lit metal hallway, slightly circular, and only just tall enough for Dalin’s thick, brown and grey head of hair to avoid brushing the ceiling. An upside-down humanoid robot made its way toward them down the right-hand side of the hall. Simyala remembered the third rule and kept her hands to herself, but her eyes followed the custodian’s strange movements as it stepped silently past them, looking at them and nodding slightly, blue eyes alight with near sentience.

Dalin waited until the custodian was several yards ahead of them before stepping out into the hallway, his hand wrapping around Simyala’s. Whereas Simyala was fascinated by the created intelligent beings that roamed the ship—keeping it running long after everyone who knew how without accessing Qweb had been cremated—Dalin didn’t like robots. They followed its inverted movement down the hallway in silence, then Dalin turned and a door opened in the wall where no sign of one had been before.

The square before them might as well have been a black hole. The inky darkness was so complete that Simyala’s eyes immediately began to water as she strained to see what lay beyond. She squeezed her father’s hand tightly as he stepped into the darkness.

The moment they were inside the door behind them slid shut, completing the blackness. There was no adjusting to the darkness, for there was nothing here that could provide light. Even though she could see nothing, Simyala felt the emptiness in front of her, enveloping her. Her breath caught in her mouth. She could see nothing, but she knew what she was looking at. This was the third time she’d been taken to the Black Room. The first time, she’d been immersed in the virtual reality of swirling color, explosions, beginnings and ends detailing the chaos of the universe that had been. If she’d been connected to the Qweb, a voice would have emanated in her head alongside the cacophony of light, but instead, Dalin’s thoughts had taught her her history. Today, there was no light at all, just absolute darkness.

Why today?

We’ve been drifting out here for a hundred thousand years and the view from this room has never changed.

Cold grasped at her heart, as it always did when she was confronted with their future.

There are over half a dozen large factions and dozens of small ones, all with their own beliefs on what is, what was, and what should be, said Dalin. But they all operate from a place of fear. They have no hope for a future that they do not create. All have their ideas of what should be done, but none of those ideas tackle the problem, because the problem seems insurmountable. They have lost the ability of blind hope, faith in a better future even when a path cannot be imagined toward it.

Simi, Dalin squeezed her hand, you will encounter these types of people throughout your life, especially if your life is to be lived entirely on this ship. But I want you to remember that there are other outlooks from which to approach life, and that there is always hope. You are living proof. Your ability, as far as I know, is the first of its kind in our species’ history, at least aboard this ship. It means we are still evolving, and it is possible that, with your gift, you have the ability to at least begin to unlock the vaults of knowledge laced throughout this ship of those who came before, those who achieved the impossible.

What do you mean, Adad? We drift at the end of time; what knowledge would allow us to escape that fate?

Our ancestors got us here through an unimaginable feat, but I do not believe that this was their purpose. They would not have wanted to wind up here any more than we do. No, they had another plan, they believed they could do something even more extraordinary.

What, Adad?

Dalin’s other hand rested on Simyala’s head. I don’t know, but I think before my time is done here, you will be able to tell me.