The Endless

The stars twinkled in Maya's vision as he managed to wipe away the last of the meal he'd been having. It was a bland, rather pasty meal, a sort of pale grey mélange with hints of color that came from the food dispenser which lay just within reach to his right, and formed his primary source of sustenance on the ship he now called home, which floated aimlessly through the vastness of space.

It was on its last legs, as was he. How long he'd been drifting out here for he had no idea - his fleet had abandoned him after the explosion at the Juncture Pass, at least according to memory. But then again, how much could he trust that? In front of him lay a single screen dashboard, smooth like glass and curved around his body, showing the starfield beyond. It was raised at a slight angle and possessed all kinds of multi-sensory inputs for his now weary body to interface with.

The bio-navigation link with his ship had been severed during the explosion, meaning he'd had to fall back on his manual training to try and pilot this thing that didn't seem to like his touch, however subtle it was. He suspected the damage from the explosion must have been severe and stared out ahead of him at the sea of stars that engulfed everything within the tiny cockpit - there was just enough room for him to manoeuvrer himself to get comfortable, but barely enough to make life itself comfortable, time now seeming like a distant memory as the coldness bit into him.

He wondered if he might be at risk from a blood cot or even multiple blood cots but didn't really care - he was used to sitting for long periods and figured if this was the end, then that was a fair trade. Having signed up to the Pilot's Academy as a youngster, he'd bought into the prevailing myth that many of his fellow pilots believed - that the Universe was theirs and they could do with it as they pleased. Dozens of young men, all eager to serve the Admirin Empire and do their bit for King & Country (as the old and oft-lampooned saying went), were unaware of the vast task they were about to undertake.

The Admirins emerged from the implosion of Earth's last government if you could call it that. Instead, it was a dictatorship, of a sort anyway; the last, dying breaths of an old regime formed from the putrid remains of flagrant nationalism and a dying need for power and singularity of race. The "Agents of the Apocalypse," a movement of rebels with a cause, instigated the new age and watched as civilization fell before them, and a new one rose from the ashes they now claimed as their own.

The "Children of the Apocalypse," as they were self-labeled, were the phoenix generation; a new entity without borders or boundaries that gradually, over time, became the foundation for a new era and perspective as the Admirin Empire was born: a civilization that held no memory or regard for what had gone before. The collective memory of our conscious and unconscious minds was wiped clean by the Flood as it was now called, paving the way for a new and more "civilized" era where anything was possible, and the stars seemed within reach.

They spread far and wide over the Earth, colonizing it and trying to restore balance wherever possible. Out of this, civilization went through immense growth as new, genetically engineered hybrids interfaced with advanced A.I. via nanotechnology to propel society's knowledge and understanding farther than it had ever gone before. The first interstellar engines were developed within decades, and space travel seemed like a distinct and feasible possibility. It was a possibility made real by the first interstellar voyages, which set out on a noble quest to colonize the known Galaxy.

These initial pioneers ventured into the cosmos, knowing they would never return; the ships they traveled on arks of a sort that held all the ingredients necessary for life. Genetic variation was ensured due to careful selection via a genetic hybrid program that provided only the most suitable candidates, who were gradually sculpted over time, enthused with cybernetics technologies that granted each subsequent generation an inherent link to technology that surrounded it like a womb.

As they referred to them, Maya was a second-generation Ark Angel, a colonist who would not live to see the dawn of a new planet given the ship's current speed but was content to dream of home. He lived in his dreams via ViLu technology - an abbreviation for Virtual Lucidity, which could sustain someone in a lucid dreaming state and allow them to manipulate it, becoming their daily reality and connecting them to others who shared this constructed reality, known in some quarters as ViLuspace, in others simply, the ViLu.

A person could spend years at a time in this state and dream they were living hundreds of years, a kind of bittersweet immortality as illusory as the distant stars, which were themselves distant echoes of their former selves. An endless light carried through the cosmos, which now felt the first, tiny steps of the human race in its quest to reach that light, guided as they were by promises of hope in the dark and endless abyss.

An endless abyss that Maya now stared into, wondering where hope lay as his eyes drifted off into sleep, only to wake up to feel the cold biting at his cheeks. The fighter he piloted wasn't designed for such long exposure in deep space: it was a short-range vessel with a tens level of four, which meant it had supplies to last maybe a month before the ship began to shut down.

Each ship was a bio-mechanical organism that needed the host to survive but could rely on sunlight and other energy sources if need be. It was so energy efficient that the body heat and electric impulses of the human body could sustain it, and unique interdimensional power lines created tiny vortexes which allowed just enough safe energy to come through via the process of entering those dimensions to siphon extra energy, which was stored in specially designed batteries.

However, the controls to these had been severed during the explosion, rendering his ship without any dimensional power, and given sunlight was at a premium, his body was the only thing keeping both him and the craft alive. He had a small storage unit behind him, but it was impossible to get the chair to rescind back into it entirely due to some kind of mechanical breakdown, and he had instead managed to pump his suit with enough air to keep it warm for whatever time had remaining.

Hibernation was now the key to survival, and he had been able to use his bio-guides to slow his metabolism down to a sustainable level. This meant any kind of complex, conscious thought was challenging, and he had to instead meditate as best he could and leave any complex thinking to his dream states, which were activated when necessary, mainly when he was feeling blue. Bio-guides were methods of controlling internal bodily processes, much like turning the knob on a radiator or changing the indicator lights on a car.

They were operated, very simply, by thought and could be amplified by altered states induced by meditation, although Maya was barely cognizant enough even for that now. He was able to divert just enough energy to maintain a conscious state of awareness with the bare minimum of meditation but was aware he hadn't moved his legs and thighs for however long he had been out here for now. He'd had to resort to dream walking while lucid to remind himself of the sensation but was made painfully aware of the reality when he woke up again.

All that was left now was the field of stars ahead, and no sound save for his breathing as the light from a nearby dwarf star cast a brilliant but brief sun glare in his visibly wiped window before vanishing again, leaving him with the twinkly gloom and nothing else. The window itself curved around in a semi-circle, the smooth, silvery walls inside the sparse cockpit offering a striking contrast which heightened the beautiful view of space beyond. It was just a shame that he couldn't enjoy it more, knowing deep down that he would see little else for the rest of his life.

He and his crew had been escorting a freighter transferring cargo from one of the fleet's ships to another. It was standard practice, and all three were in the usual triangle formation when surrounding the freighter, which resembled a giant bulbous, multi-sectioned Vecla ship as it made its way to the nearest member of the fleet. The fleet tried to stay together to allow for direct docking if needed, but drift seemed inevitable for some reason, no matter what course they took.

Onboard scientists had determined it was some kind of odd, dimensional anomaly, but no firm conclusion had been made, nor any mechanisms with which to alter this. Dimensional transport was still being developed, so freight runs like this had become necessary to keep the operation running smoothly. As they had reached a designated point, alarms had started signaling in bio-connections that ran between the three men as three distant objects came into view.

They were jet black against the darkness of space and registered no information of any kind on the ship's sensors as they tore straight through the freighter, causing it to explode. The explosion had caught Maya off-guard as he was the closest to the freighter, and the shock to his own system overloaded his ship's bio-circuitry, causing severe instability, which knocked him off track and right into the path of debris which had been sent careening away from the explosion at high speed.

He remembered nothing but blackness as the ship started to roll, and he woke up to feel the heartbeat of his craft slowly sinking to the point where he couldn't hear it anymore; perhaps a figment of his imagination, he could not tell, but a distinct memory that haunted him as the ship drifted aimlessly with no help in sight. What those objects had been, he had no idea, but he couldn't give much thought to them as he now had to contend with his own desperate situation.

Usually, there were safeguards to prevent such overloads, and it was a mystery to Maya why it hadn't worked. He could only surmise that there had been some kind of design or engineering flaw in the ship, which was highly unusual but still possible. There had been rumors of another pilot encountering something similar while on a recent reconnaissance mission to one of the uncharted regions, but this was pure speculation, and anybody asking questions about it had been silenced.

It was understandable, perhaps, he had pondered, given that the Admirins would not want to risk morale being weakened by such incidents, but still worrying, and thoughts had crossed his mind of something similar happening to him, but he had tried to banish it. The idea made him feel helpless, and now that the bio-navigation link was broken, he had no way of knowing for sure where he was and what was out there and could only assume the fleet had presumed he was lost and carried on without him. What a sad end, he thought, trying to make himself comfortable as the ship hurtled through space like a lifeless asteroid that careened on its way to an eventual collision.

A collision with destiny, he thought, as he could feel himself growing weaker all the time and pondered his fate in the seemingly endless labyrinth he now called home. That the ship had slowed to a stable trajectory through space had undoubtedly left him puzzled due to the severe roll the craft had been sent into, and he wondered if those same objects now played a hand in proceedings? He was past the point of caring. As far as he knew, he would die, and he now spent many hours trying to reconcile that very fact.

He had never had many friends when onboard the ship. He was still very young, and despite being considered one of the best pilots in training, most of his relationships had been with those he knew via his family (now long gone) or those he trained within the Pilot's Academy. His closest friend, Drazor, who he knew through his Mom, had been something of an enigma to him during their time together.

He was a few years younger and had all of the qualities that made Maya envious of him - good looks, a fierce intelligence, a very concise manner yet with the physical disposition of an athlete who had only just learned how to walk. He was graceful yet clumsy, athletic yet prone to bouts of severe fatigue, endurance beyond Maya's imaginings yet with the inclination to crawl into a shell at the first sign of trouble.

Maya only knew of his endurance due to his own bio-abilities, which meant he could see further into the space-time continuum than most, a rare gift that on this particular occasion had alluded him as he had seen next to nothing about the attack that would later put him in this position. He had wondered what that meant and if his own abilities were now failing him, but he preferred now to dwell on it, trying to think back to happier times whenever possible.

One such time had been when he and Drazor had embarked on their first experiment in "mind navigation," that is to say that, thanks to their combined mental abilities, they could effectively create a replication of the ship they were on in their minds and navigate it during their ViLu states and shape it exactly the way they wanted. The resultant kingdoms were splendid to behold as each envisaged themselves as kings to realms of unimaginable wealth and power.

Drazor took to the left side of the ship and Maya the right, and together they had parties that would put the party goers of Earth's history to shame. And because they were dreaming, anything was possible, which sometimes meant things took a turn for the wild side, although that is a story for another time. The last time they had seen each other had been the week before when Drazor had left for a secret exploration mission to an area of space that was completely uncharted.

Such expeditions were organized occasionally to use the ship's capabilities and obtain first-hand, individual eyewitness accounts rather than data collection relays from the droid fleet that was scattered nearby on its own mission of exploration. He had remembered Drazor's look as he left - the most perfect face of contentment, and he somehow knew deep in his heart that his friend would be gone for a long time.

He hoped Drazor would be okay and remembered feeling a curious mixture of elation and sadness as seeing the best friend he'd ever had disappeared into the unknown regions, for however long that might be. He thought it ironic that he was here now, perhaps not far from where his friend might be, and hoped to see him again, but felt the chances of that were now increasingly slim.

He let himself drift further back into his past before he stirred from his reverie by a sudden beeping sound: the oxygen levels on the ship were going down, which was his first prompt that things were taking a turn for the worst. As much as he had been expecting it, he was also dreading it and only just managed to turn off the beacon with as much effort as his fatigued body and mind could make. He felt the power level in the ship drop suddenly as a result and tried to steady himself against the cold dark that now waned to consume him like a hungry shadow.

He stared again in the blackness contemplating its mystery. Just what lay beyond the reach of humanity? What alien beings were now observing him as he observed them? Did they even exist? He knew there must as he'd dreamt of them before, but the details were often vague and left him wanting more in the way of definition.

Then again, they were dreams, and who could tell their veracity? He wanted to believe it was the truth, but he had a hard time reconciling that now that everyone and everything he knew and loved was all but a distant speck in the Universe as he journeyed further and further away from them to who knows where. It was a sobering thought to think that he would be drifting in the cosmos long after he had passed; the ship now a silent tomb to a man who had often been quiet most of his life.

Being of service helped him to feel that he wasn't silent, however, and if he had done his duty as expected, then he wanted to roar and stake his claim as the unique individual he really was. He laughed at the idea of yelling in the ship and thought about attempting it, but the energy just wasn't there. He could have cried but could not. He could feel the vessel draining him and holding him in a place like a bind as he tried to remain calm and think of quieter days.

They were hazy in his memory, disappearing as soon as he tried to reach them, much like the rapid pulse of an engine fire that declared the departure of a ship before disappearing into nothingness again. He was alone, and he knew it and could only close his eyes and try to draw himself back into dreamland.

It only worked sporadically, and when it did, he saw the most surreal version of space before him and felt himself being propelled outside the ship where an extraordinary plethora of colors emerged in front of him. It was a miracle as if the Universe were offering him a hand of light in which to wrap himself in its warm embrace. He would feel it, often for what felt like an eternity before it subsided again, and he felt the cold reality of his cabin seep in again and saw the distant stars as they beckoned to him once more. He thought he could almost reach out and grab them, the viewscreen seeming to disappear as the void became both his living space and his tomb.

The line between life and fantasy continued to blur, and he could sometimes sense his physical body as if it were a distant object that he couldn't wait to leave. Time seemed to confuse his sense of normalcy as he soon became aware that he had no idea how much time had elapsed. It was fascinating to him how time seemed to lose meaning like that; how the alertness of a time-keeping system kept one engrained to a grid of purpose that, as he readily found, was easily scrunched up and thrown away by a Universe which seemed to declare it void in the vastness of its own creation.

It was almost as if time did not exist, and neither did anything around him. He was hurtling through the void but felt devoid of any sensation of it, only that he had now lost all feeling and felt no desire for food, nor comfort, nor any of the ordinary pleasures that a human being would call worthy of life itself.

He was instead just a bio-organism, floating through the dark abyss in a hunk of metal that could quickly be shattered by the next opportune visit by an asteroid, or indeed the next visit from whatever those things were before. They had come to him briefly in dream moments, but only fleeting glimpses as a shadow seemed to surround them.

What were they? He wondered this as his eyelids now struggled to keep themselves open, the coldness seeping in as he felt his hands going numb. The ship seemed to shudder slightly as his own life signs began to fade, and for the first time in a long time, he felt himself slipping away; reality seemed to bend and distort as if he were a giant rubber band waiting to be released.

He was stopped in his train of thought by an overwhelmingly bright light that covered his vision. As he opened his eyes, the cabin was ablaze with this bright light, which then cooled to reveal a gaping white hole in space right in front of him. It looked like a portal in the shape of a giant eye, with light streaming from it like rivulets of water. He wasn't sure if he was dreaming but could make out the same black craft as before, only now distant shapes hovering around its periphery. He then felt the ship shudder again, and before he knew it, he was outside of it.

Reality grew more porous as he realized he was fully awake now and floating outside of the ship, which resembled a darkened fighter plane from Earth's past in a boomerang formation and chrome engines underneath its chassis. He found himself moving towards the bright light, and in his head, a voice grew louder, urging him to go into it. He suddenly found himself slipping into the whiteness, and before he knew it, he was sitting in his favorite chair, in a garden on a lush green planet, which the voice told him was Earth. He felt like he was living another life, that this wasn't his body which he realized it wasn't. It was instead a young man in his late thirties, with combed, brown hair now, who now took the place of Maya's as his own, uniformed, red-haired features disappeared into the past.

He had no sense of what had happened other than the most incredible sense of bliss he had ever felt before in his life and realized that this was a place where it didn't matter who you were, where you were from, or even crucially, what was going on. His inner voice told him he was beyond that all now, and as he leaned back in the chair, he smiled: he had finally made it to paradise, and space seemed like a distant memory as the space between him and the infinite now became measured in the stuff of dreams themselves.

He was home. And he intended to stay.