Here's my story. I don't like it because it's got spaceships. Oh well.
Holy hell, did you get all that, Carlisle? I should be writing poetry with the rest of the ******* back home. My talents are wasted in this slumber of…of eternity. Or maybe death? Never mind.
Siesta. Yeah, definitely Siesta, I don’t think I get this silly when I’m awake. You think it’s weird that I try and guess whether I’m asleep or awake, don’t you? Shut up, Siesta-Fiesta passes the time. You know you’d do the same thing in my situation; you think I’m the lucky one but you’re wrong—you’ll never understand what it’s like to sit around here in infinite silence. Mmm, gold.
“Hey, are you alive?”
My only anchors are the sounds I make myself. And what if they aren’t even real? Ha!
“Looks like we’ve got one survivor. He’s really out of it. I don’t even want to guess how long he’s been drifting in here.”
I might even be dead. Dammit, what if you’re alive and I’m the dead one?! Think of all the time I've wasted on Siesta-Fiesta. This is one hell of a Hell Lucifer thought up for me. I can’t blame him though. God, I’m hungry. How long was it since I ate the last of the food?
Something touched my arm. That’s a silly thing to wear, Carlisle.
“I don’t know if you can hear me but I’m taking you over to our ship. You have to put this on.”
Carlisle, that’s not your face. That’s not you at all, is it? Hm. He’s got a suit for me that I think he wants me to wear. Well it’s not like I had other plans for today. He might have some food for me too.
He led me out of the room (slash Hell, maybe). Down dead halls and across rooms that I had walked through before, many, uh, moons ago. I didn’t see what his rush was; we had all of forever to get to wherever we were going. I stared down at my walking feet; that was the spot where my body met illusion, and if should reality dare reveal itself, it would surely manifest there.
Behind me, back in that imprisoning room, a familiar growl called out, like echoes of my wretched gut’s pleas. I looked back and heard them faintly and just glimpsed their shadows—the three beasts of dogs that hunt me. I was being dragged somehow through a lifeless field of mud—away from the dogs, yes, but I wasn’t reassured. My feet were still caked in mud and the dogs, I knew, could follow me anywhere.
The man that wasn’t Carlisle anymore pulled me into an unknown room full of unknown faces and that was when my stomach shook me from my dream.
+++++
My aching stomach woke me up, despite the IV tube stuck in my arm. I slapped the thing away and dragged myself upright to find some real food. My feet it the ground, followed immediately by my face. Lying on the cold floor, I pondered the pointy little animal thrashing about in my bell, snarling at me to get my lazy carcass up and eat something. He’s a bossy one, isn’t he, Carlisle? Just give me a minute.
Someone walked into the infirmary. He was—yes, he definitely wasn’t the man that wasn’t you. Am I making sense, Carlisle? He glanced at me, then turned and left the room. I at least managed to yell food! at him before the door shut.
I gave the “standing up” expedition another go, but, failing miserably, decided to get a quick nap in. Why not, maybe I’d wake up in an all-you-can-eat buffet this time.
At that moment the door opened again, this time admitting the man that wasn’t Carlisle—an angel that let me to Heaven, or a demon that pulled me into another Hell. After he helped me back onto the bed I noticed the tin of rations he brought with him and decided that he was in fact of the angelic persuasion. I snatched the little meal from him and dug in.
“My name is Vic.”
I nodded.
“What’s your name?”
“Frank.”
“Frank, do you know where you are?”
Now that’s the question, isn’t it, Carlisle? I could be on some weird spaceship hurtling to God only knows where. Or maybe this is all a dream and I’m still back on that tomb of a ship I left that tomb of a planet on. Or I’m dead. I’ve explored that possibility with you before, right, Carlisle? I think so. I don't think I captured all that with a shrug, but I tried.
“Well this may be hard to believe, but you’re on a ship designed by—“
“Aliens.”
“What? No—“
“How many of these things you got?” I said, waving the empty tin.
Vic’s shock lasted only a moment. “We’re from Earth and all. We just haven’t been there in a while. I think it’s important for you to understand where you are right now and the situation it entails.”
I set my thoroughly cleaned plate down and wagged my head back and forth a bit. I did that a lot back then; it’s quite relaxing. “I know this thing I’m sitting in is way too advanced to come out of Earth. The thing I just left is the first ship sent outside the solar system for, what, 50 years? Since before the wars. So what’s this, huh? Makes no sense.”
Vic seemed unsure of whether to start talking.
“It’s really better just to ignore it all,” I said, deciding for him. “I’ll feel better after I get some more rest.”
And with that the man that wasn’t Carlisle but just might be a man named Vic left the room, leaving me alone again, alone with the restless little animal in my stomach. It growled a bit.
+++++
I didn’t realize what I had done until I was already one step out the door.
I had believed that reintroduction into a social existence would be difficult, to say the least. In my dazed hunger I hadn’t grasped what the door less than four feet from me represented. It was something that remained unavailable to me ever since all these dreams and nightmares. I knew exactly what my sensed would tell me was behind it and how I would respond, but what was really there all depended on Siesta-Fiesta, didn’t it, Carlisle? There, right there, was a place I could finally wake up, if it was a place at all. Or I could lose myself entirely in the illusion and sleep until not even death could rouse me.
But it was too late to wax poetic about it; I had already clomped through the doorway as unceremoniously as possible. I met a hallway and followed it to a dining room. It hadn’t occurred to me until then that time actually began to have meaning when I stepped on this ship. That golden silence testified a stopped clock; was I lost in there for a lifetime six times over or just the space between two ticks? The truth hadn’t mattered to me then; I was in a place that ignored time and laughed at the idiots who revered it. And now I’m back among the idiots. That felt good; I felt more human—even if it really only meant I knew whether I’d be eating breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
Only one looked up as I entered, and then quickly turned back to his plate. None of them formed a single word or made eye contact with another. They ate in a silent, robotic manner that recognized only the task before them as vital in the grand scheme of things. After a bit of toying with the microwave, I plopped down at an adjacent table and joined them in their noiseless feast. I felt I was back on that ruined ship with no one but the memory of Carlisle and my throbbing stomach. These were ghosts next to me.
I ate without looking up until my plate was clean. I always clean my plate, don’t I, Carlisle? I’m a growing boy.
The ghosts had disposed of their plates and each now sipped from a water bottle in a red label. No hint in their eyes communicated the realization that they shared this room with four others. I imagine they looked like I once did as I huddled aboard that ship in the only room that contained circulating air, memorizing every detail of the place until it dominated even my dreams.
At some unknowable cue, the ghosts all stood up and exited the dining room. I barely noticed their absence.
Vic replaced them a moment later and sat down next to me. He seemed to know what I was thinking from the look on my face.
“We sacrificed a lot escaping Earth during the wars. They are some that sacrificed more than the rest of us.”
“Not nearly as much as we sacrificed.”
Vic paused before taking the next bite. “That’s true. After all those bombings, I think our little band back at the colony should equal about a tenth of Earth’s population.”
“Because you got away. With technology not yet invented,” I mused.
“Like I said, it was costly. Many…lost their humanity.”
“Lucky bastards.”
Vic cocked his head in amused puzzlement.
“Humanity,“ I said, “the thing that bombed itself silly until there just weren’t enough people to keep the wars going. Which I’m sure was a real disappointment to many of them.”
Vic silently accepted the philosophies of a nutbar.
“You know what? They all had two drinks,” I said.
“Huh?”
“One like mine from the refrigerators, and then a water bottle with a red label as like a dessert. I see you don’t have one.”
“No. Those men need that to live.”
I left then because I felt awkward. I wanted to see what else there was to find on this ship of ghosts.
I think I might really be awake, Carlisle. Fiesta.
+++++
Several hours after the lights dimmed to provide us all with a “night,” I gave in to the little beast inside my belly. He never slept, did he? And he wouldn’t let me either. Instead of bothering to turn the lights on, I just groped in the dark dining room for a sandwich and chewed it. It’s not a good idea to sleep right after eating, is it, Carlisle? So I took a walk down the hall and turned at the corner. From here I could see down this new passage straight into the cockpit. By the lights of the machinery, I could see two figures seated at the controls, saying nothing and barely even moving. I would have thought them asleep if I didn’t know they were only ghosts. I sat down with my back against the wall, trying hard not to make a sound. I watched the ghosts. They clearly had no real job to do here except stand guard against God-knows-what. If we had done the same, would you be more than just a vision?
Hours passed, probably. The monitors surrounding them that far outstripped Earth’s in size and clarity showed nothing—the essence of space. Distant suns spotted the screen. We were going so **** fast and still the stars stayed put. There’s a chance one of them nurtures a planet rich with intelligent life like our own, you know. I wondered how that race has chosen or are choosing to extinguish themselves; perhaps in their intelligence they have imagined far more creative ways than war to die.
In an instant that almost made me jump, both ghosts leaned into the controls and set to work typing figures, pressing buttons, flipping switches, cranking cranks, pumping pumps—whatever it is you do on this ship. The previously stationary stars inched counter-clockwise until I think we faced the way we came. The movement was entirely undetectable from inside.
I had neither wondered nor cared where we were headed. What I knew was it led me away from that planet and that ruined ship and I satisfied myself fully with that knowledge. Now we approached both and the animal inside quivered; from fear or joy I couldn’t tell.
The door to my room, the infirmary, down the hall opened silently and some figure disappeared inside. A moment later he stepped out again and glanced around until he noticed me seated by the corner. Just by the way he moved I could tell he was a ghost, though I couldn’t see his face in the dark. He approached and when he was close he held something in his hand toward me and I clutched at my barren stomach in the field of mud that I have hidden in for so long. They chased me across the universe and the only option I have left is to hide and wait, but my hunger just couldn’t agree to that. I tried to swallow some of the mud but it would not stay down. My own hunger tore my intestines to ribbons and the furious animal was no longer inside but was the things hunted me and barked madly somewhere nearby, all an ungodly pressure driving me to that border to insanity until I longer for the nothingness of my wreck of a ship. More than anything I needed to eat, but all I had left was my own body’s filth. I ate and when I did I saw the beast I thought was three dogs was really only one except now it was Vic sitting beside me as I lay in bed. My skull felt like it was filled to bursting with what I had just eaten.
“While you’re still conscious I need to explain some things to you; it will make the process easier if you understand on your own,” he said, all his friendliness lost, or at least well-hidden.
No need tie me down; the slightest movement of my head sloshed shards of glass around in my brain.
“A generation ago, before the wars had escalated too far, a group of scientists worked toward creating artificial neurons in order to repair brain damage.”
I wiggled a toe and a line of fire connecting foot to head flared under my skin like lighting a trail of gunpowder.
“The neurons were meant to communicate without physical touch and they worked perfectly. However, the neurons broadened their powers of communication on their own accord and the scientists found every animal subject to be neurologically linked, forming one mind even smarter than a human’s.”
His words pounded my already wracked mind like waves against a sand castle and I held onto consciousness by listening to that swollen animal who was back inside howl in outrage at this thing that has happened to my body.
“In time the artificial neurons spread to the scientists and their family and friends until a community developed that formed a single entity with incredible intelligence. Predicting the worldwide destruction soon to commence, this—entity—migrated to a distant little plot in space, bringing with them “outside” humans as well as animals.”
Two of every kind, huh, Carlisle?
“That is the history as basically as I can put it. We have existed peacefully far from Earth and separated ourselves from its workings. At least until we found out you people of war have begun to reclaim space travel.”
A man-made Heaven? He doesn’t realize it’s a sham, the fool. Man can only create Hell.
“Of course we can’t just continue to destroy all the ships that come out of the planet, so the entity has allowed you to join it in order to sabotage the space program from within.”
An unexplained power failure that left only one room with oxygen and the collapse of every engine simultaneously. And me a ghost walking among the living undetected. Isn’t that what I’ve been all this time, Carlisle? The beast snarled and rattled its cage.
Vic handed me one of those famous water bottles in red labels.
“Breathe the fumes from this liquid—they contain necessary proteins that energize the artificial neurons. Right now they have already used most of their energy hooking up to your own neurons and connecting to the entity.”
I grabbed the bottle hungrily. What floated about inside drove me to madness with desire. Something in my brain scrabbled toward that red label with invisible tentacles, dragging the rest of me along with it, allowing no thought except a yearning draped all around me like a chain mail blanket. The animal burst into awareness again as the liquid seeped toward my open lips. He screamed and clawed at my stomach, growing more and more furious until finally my belly could hold him no longer and he exploded outward, grappling the thing in my brain. My mouth filled with what fizzed from the liquid. The path to lungs and the path to stomach constricted and expanded as the two beasts tore at each other until one was conquered and slain.
In the back of my fading mind I heard Vic mutter a word and leave the room.
+++++
Nothingness sucked away the air until only one bedroom remained and all six members of the crew gathered there. They had assumed the seventh had died since he was the last to find out about the oxygen loss, but I had survived by squeezing through the air duct and following my nose until I had secretly rejoined my crew. At the time I didn’t know why I still hid from them. I watched and waited only a few feet above them. No, that hasn’t happened yet, has it, Carlisle? It will, though. I need to survive, that’s what the animal is telling me and the animal knows best. The thing with tentacles in my brain is dead but they don’t know it. I can feel someone there, as though I’m silently listening to a phone conversation from an unknown third phone. First I had to hide. That is what the animal is telling me and the animal knows best.
This someone in my head, though—he knows things, far more things than anyone should know and he doesn’t know I know them too now. He can disable a ship and leave its passengers alive and so can I. Through the ducts I go until I find the power generator. All I need is some food, so I kept the dining room intact, everything else has to go, isn’t that right, Carlisle? Now it is time to pop out and say hello to the someone in my brain.
+++++
They gathered, even before the air began to grow thin. I knew they would. The ghosts came first, tearing the cabinets and refrigerators apart and devouring what they found. The growing beast inside chuckled. Vic was the last to find this place that would become his haven, and when he did the food capable of a month of travel was nearly gone. Every head swiveled at his entrance and they all chanted in flawless synchrony “kill the thing. Kill the hungry thing that’s killing us. Find Frank.” After his utter shock wore off, Vic ran from the room, eager to escape the horror in that room that would only worsen.
He would search in a frenzy; he was desperate to restore his Heaven designed and ruled by ghosts. He would run and swing that tranquilizer gun around until he had no choice but to return to the dining room. Besides, he was starting to find it hard to breathe.
The animal inside took hold of and bent to his will the someone who was trying to retreat from my mind and protect himself with reason and logic that the gremlin couldn’t hear. The animal howled his triumph.
Vic must have realized that in a few moments the difference between inside and outside would be nullified. He stepped into the dining room one last time and the door locked behind him. It’s for his own good, said Mr. Power Generator to Mr. Door.
Only one ghost still lived, and he was a bloody mess. He did not seem to notice the newcomer; all his attention was focused on the body from which he stripped chunks of meat with his red teeth. Gore formed a carpet over the tile floor and human scraps the furniture. Vic fired his gun into the last moving ghost. He beat at the door. He collapsed in a hysteric lump.
He reminds me of you, Carlisle. You were the last as well. I held my hunger for so long while you and the rest devoured each other. I think that was when this beast came. But he wouldn’t stay put. He sprouted three dog heads and roared that I eat, eat no matter the cost, eat until the beast was satisfied and all that remained were shining white trophies tucked under the bed. It will happen again, but there is still some time left I think.
The ghostly Heaven must now be a Hell and the hellish Earth now my sanctuary. This place hurtles to that planet even now, carried by its momentum. I don’t feel guilty; the Heaven without humanity was far too vulnerable to it. It would not have survived anyway. Nor would it have lasted mimicking Earth and toting humanity at its core. Perhaps by the time the wars come again we will be too spread out in nothingness and silence to annihilate the population in any great numbers. It could be that’s the antidote for war: everyone needs to just get the hell away from each other. Maybe spend some quality time alone on a wrecked ship. So there you go, Carlisle—problem solved.
The animal is growing and changing. I see his three heads clearly. He is hungry. So am I.
My Best Friend Carlisle
Silence is golden, isn’t it Carlisle? Is that the saying? Well if silence is golden I’m the richest bastard in the universe. My silence is more than just lack of noise, huh? A lack of anything and everything. Well no, I actually do have everything. It’s all right here, stretched out before me, all that humanity back home has longed for in its desperate romanticism. It’s just that the everything they dreamed about happens to be nothing at all. Those pretty little lights look so close together but really they just decorate one great big nothing.Holy hell, did you get all that, Carlisle? I should be writing poetry with the rest of the ******* back home. My talents are wasted in this slumber of…of eternity. Or maybe death? Never mind.
Siesta. Yeah, definitely Siesta, I don’t think I get this silly when I’m awake. You think it’s weird that I try and guess whether I’m asleep or awake, don’t you? Shut up, Siesta-Fiesta passes the time. You know you’d do the same thing in my situation; you think I’m the lucky one but you’re wrong—you’ll never understand what it’s like to sit around here in infinite silence. Mmm, gold.
“Hey, are you alive?”
My only anchors are the sounds I make myself. And what if they aren’t even real? Ha!
“Looks like we’ve got one survivor. He’s really out of it. I don’t even want to guess how long he’s been drifting in here.”
I might even be dead. Dammit, what if you’re alive and I’m the dead one?! Think of all the time I've wasted on Siesta-Fiesta. This is one hell of a Hell Lucifer thought up for me. I can’t blame him though. God, I’m hungry. How long was it since I ate the last of the food?
Something touched my arm. That’s a silly thing to wear, Carlisle.
“I don’t know if you can hear me but I’m taking you over to our ship. You have to put this on.”
Carlisle, that’s not your face. That’s not you at all, is it? Hm. He’s got a suit for me that I think he wants me to wear. Well it’s not like I had other plans for today. He might have some food for me too.
He led me out of the room (slash Hell, maybe). Down dead halls and across rooms that I had walked through before, many, uh, moons ago. I didn’t see what his rush was; we had all of forever to get to wherever we were going. I stared down at my walking feet; that was the spot where my body met illusion, and if should reality dare reveal itself, it would surely manifest there.
Behind me, back in that imprisoning room, a familiar growl called out, like echoes of my wretched gut’s pleas. I looked back and heard them faintly and just glimpsed their shadows—the three beasts of dogs that hunt me. I was being dragged somehow through a lifeless field of mud—away from the dogs, yes, but I wasn’t reassured. My feet were still caked in mud and the dogs, I knew, could follow me anywhere.
The man that wasn’t Carlisle anymore pulled me into an unknown room full of unknown faces and that was when my stomach shook me from my dream.
+++++
My aching stomach woke me up, despite the IV tube stuck in my arm. I slapped the thing away and dragged myself upright to find some real food. My feet it the ground, followed immediately by my face. Lying on the cold floor, I pondered the pointy little animal thrashing about in my bell, snarling at me to get my lazy carcass up and eat something. He’s a bossy one, isn’t he, Carlisle? Just give me a minute.
Someone walked into the infirmary. He was—yes, he definitely wasn’t the man that wasn’t you. Am I making sense, Carlisle? He glanced at me, then turned and left the room. I at least managed to yell food! at him before the door shut.
I gave the “standing up” expedition another go, but, failing miserably, decided to get a quick nap in. Why not, maybe I’d wake up in an all-you-can-eat buffet this time.
At that moment the door opened again, this time admitting the man that wasn’t Carlisle—an angel that let me to Heaven, or a demon that pulled me into another Hell. After he helped me back onto the bed I noticed the tin of rations he brought with him and decided that he was in fact of the angelic persuasion. I snatched the little meal from him and dug in.
“My name is Vic.”
I nodded.
“What’s your name?”
“Frank.”
“Frank, do you know where you are?”
Now that’s the question, isn’t it, Carlisle? I could be on some weird spaceship hurtling to God only knows where. Or maybe this is all a dream and I’m still back on that tomb of a ship I left that tomb of a planet on. Or I’m dead. I’ve explored that possibility with you before, right, Carlisle? I think so. I don't think I captured all that with a shrug, but I tried.
“Well this may be hard to believe, but you’re on a ship designed by—“
“Aliens.”
“What? No—“
“How many of these things you got?” I said, waving the empty tin.
Vic’s shock lasted only a moment. “We’re from Earth and all. We just haven’t been there in a while. I think it’s important for you to understand where you are right now and the situation it entails.”
I set my thoroughly cleaned plate down and wagged my head back and forth a bit. I did that a lot back then; it’s quite relaxing. “I know this thing I’m sitting in is way too advanced to come out of Earth. The thing I just left is the first ship sent outside the solar system for, what, 50 years? Since before the wars. So what’s this, huh? Makes no sense.”
Vic seemed unsure of whether to start talking.
“It’s really better just to ignore it all,” I said, deciding for him. “I’ll feel better after I get some more rest.”
And with that the man that wasn’t Carlisle but just might be a man named Vic left the room, leaving me alone again, alone with the restless little animal in my stomach. It growled a bit.
+++++
I didn’t realize what I had done until I was already one step out the door.
I had believed that reintroduction into a social existence would be difficult, to say the least. In my dazed hunger I hadn’t grasped what the door less than four feet from me represented. It was something that remained unavailable to me ever since all these dreams and nightmares. I knew exactly what my sensed would tell me was behind it and how I would respond, but what was really there all depended on Siesta-Fiesta, didn’t it, Carlisle? There, right there, was a place I could finally wake up, if it was a place at all. Or I could lose myself entirely in the illusion and sleep until not even death could rouse me.
But it was too late to wax poetic about it; I had already clomped through the doorway as unceremoniously as possible. I met a hallway and followed it to a dining room. It hadn’t occurred to me until then that time actually began to have meaning when I stepped on this ship. That golden silence testified a stopped clock; was I lost in there for a lifetime six times over or just the space between two ticks? The truth hadn’t mattered to me then; I was in a place that ignored time and laughed at the idiots who revered it. And now I’m back among the idiots. That felt good; I felt more human—even if it really only meant I knew whether I’d be eating breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
Only one looked up as I entered, and then quickly turned back to his plate. None of them formed a single word or made eye contact with another. They ate in a silent, robotic manner that recognized only the task before them as vital in the grand scheme of things. After a bit of toying with the microwave, I plopped down at an adjacent table and joined them in their noiseless feast. I felt I was back on that ruined ship with no one but the memory of Carlisle and my throbbing stomach. These were ghosts next to me.
I ate without looking up until my plate was clean. I always clean my plate, don’t I, Carlisle? I’m a growing boy.
The ghosts had disposed of their plates and each now sipped from a water bottle in a red label. No hint in their eyes communicated the realization that they shared this room with four others. I imagine they looked like I once did as I huddled aboard that ship in the only room that contained circulating air, memorizing every detail of the place until it dominated even my dreams.
At some unknowable cue, the ghosts all stood up and exited the dining room. I barely noticed their absence.
Vic replaced them a moment later and sat down next to me. He seemed to know what I was thinking from the look on my face.
“We sacrificed a lot escaping Earth during the wars. They are some that sacrificed more than the rest of us.”
“Not nearly as much as we sacrificed.”
Vic paused before taking the next bite. “That’s true. After all those bombings, I think our little band back at the colony should equal about a tenth of Earth’s population.”
“Because you got away. With technology not yet invented,” I mused.
“Like I said, it was costly. Many…lost their humanity.”
“Lucky bastards.”
Vic cocked his head in amused puzzlement.
“Humanity,“ I said, “the thing that bombed itself silly until there just weren’t enough people to keep the wars going. Which I’m sure was a real disappointment to many of them.”
Vic silently accepted the philosophies of a nutbar.
“You know what? They all had two drinks,” I said.
“Huh?”
“One like mine from the refrigerators, and then a water bottle with a red label as like a dessert. I see you don’t have one.”
“No. Those men need that to live.”
I left then because I felt awkward. I wanted to see what else there was to find on this ship of ghosts.
I think I might really be awake, Carlisle. Fiesta.
+++++
Several hours after the lights dimmed to provide us all with a “night,” I gave in to the little beast inside my belly. He never slept, did he? And he wouldn’t let me either. Instead of bothering to turn the lights on, I just groped in the dark dining room for a sandwich and chewed it. It’s not a good idea to sleep right after eating, is it, Carlisle? So I took a walk down the hall and turned at the corner. From here I could see down this new passage straight into the cockpit. By the lights of the machinery, I could see two figures seated at the controls, saying nothing and barely even moving. I would have thought them asleep if I didn’t know they were only ghosts. I sat down with my back against the wall, trying hard not to make a sound. I watched the ghosts. They clearly had no real job to do here except stand guard against God-knows-what. If we had done the same, would you be more than just a vision?
Hours passed, probably. The monitors surrounding them that far outstripped Earth’s in size and clarity showed nothing—the essence of space. Distant suns spotted the screen. We were going so **** fast and still the stars stayed put. There’s a chance one of them nurtures a planet rich with intelligent life like our own, you know. I wondered how that race has chosen or are choosing to extinguish themselves; perhaps in their intelligence they have imagined far more creative ways than war to die.
In an instant that almost made me jump, both ghosts leaned into the controls and set to work typing figures, pressing buttons, flipping switches, cranking cranks, pumping pumps—whatever it is you do on this ship. The previously stationary stars inched counter-clockwise until I think we faced the way we came. The movement was entirely undetectable from inside.
I had neither wondered nor cared where we were headed. What I knew was it led me away from that planet and that ruined ship and I satisfied myself fully with that knowledge. Now we approached both and the animal inside quivered; from fear or joy I couldn’t tell.
The door to my room, the infirmary, down the hall opened silently and some figure disappeared inside. A moment later he stepped out again and glanced around until he noticed me seated by the corner. Just by the way he moved I could tell he was a ghost, though I couldn’t see his face in the dark. He approached and when he was close he held something in his hand toward me and I clutched at my barren stomach in the field of mud that I have hidden in for so long. They chased me across the universe and the only option I have left is to hide and wait, but my hunger just couldn’t agree to that. I tried to swallow some of the mud but it would not stay down. My own hunger tore my intestines to ribbons and the furious animal was no longer inside but was the things hunted me and barked madly somewhere nearby, all an ungodly pressure driving me to that border to insanity until I longer for the nothingness of my wreck of a ship. More than anything I needed to eat, but all I had left was my own body’s filth. I ate and when I did I saw the beast I thought was three dogs was really only one except now it was Vic sitting beside me as I lay in bed. My skull felt like it was filled to bursting with what I had just eaten.
“While you’re still conscious I need to explain some things to you; it will make the process easier if you understand on your own,” he said, all his friendliness lost, or at least well-hidden.
No need tie me down; the slightest movement of my head sloshed shards of glass around in my brain.
“A generation ago, before the wars had escalated too far, a group of scientists worked toward creating artificial neurons in order to repair brain damage.”
I wiggled a toe and a line of fire connecting foot to head flared under my skin like lighting a trail of gunpowder.
“The neurons were meant to communicate without physical touch and they worked perfectly. However, the neurons broadened their powers of communication on their own accord and the scientists found every animal subject to be neurologically linked, forming one mind even smarter than a human’s.”
His words pounded my already wracked mind like waves against a sand castle and I held onto consciousness by listening to that swollen animal who was back inside howl in outrage at this thing that has happened to my body.
“In time the artificial neurons spread to the scientists and their family and friends until a community developed that formed a single entity with incredible intelligence. Predicting the worldwide destruction soon to commence, this—entity—migrated to a distant little plot in space, bringing with them “outside” humans as well as animals.”
Two of every kind, huh, Carlisle?
“That is the history as basically as I can put it. We have existed peacefully far from Earth and separated ourselves from its workings. At least until we found out you people of war have begun to reclaim space travel.”
A man-made Heaven? He doesn’t realize it’s a sham, the fool. Man can only create Hell.
“Of course we can’t just continue to destroy all the ships that come out of the planet, so the entity has allowed you to join it in order to sabotage the space program from within.”
An unexplained power failure that left only one room with oxygen and the collapse of every engine simultaneously. And me a ghost walking among the living undetected. Isn’t that what I’ve been all this time, Carlisle? The beast snarled and rattled its cage.
Vic handed me one of those famous water bottles in red labels.
“Breathe the fumes from this liquid—they contain necessary proteins that energize the artificial neurons. Right now they have already used most of their energy hooking up to your own neurons and connecting to the entity.”
I grabbed the bottle hungrily. What floated about inside drove me to madness with desire. Something in my brain scrabbled toward that red label with invisible tentacles, dragging the rest of me along with it, allowing no thought except a yearning draped all around me like a chain mail blanket. The animal burst into awareness again as the liquid seeped toward my open lips. He screamed and clawed at my stomach, growing more and more furious until finally my belly could hold him no longer and he exploded outward, grappling the thing in my brain. My mouth filled with what fizzed from the liquid. The path to lungs and the path to stomach constricted and expanded as the two beasts tore at each other until one was conquered and slain.
In the back of my fading mind I heard Vic mutter a word and leave the room.
+++++
Nothingness sucked away the air until only one bedroom remained and all six members of the crew gathered there. They had assumed the seventh had died since he was the last to find out about the oxygen loss, but I had survived by squeezing through the air duct and following my nose until I had secretly rejoined my crew. At the time I didn’t know why I still hid from them. I watched and waited only a few feet above them. No, that hasn’t happened yet, has it, Carlisle? It will, though. I need to survive, that’s what the animal is telling me and the animal knows best. The thing with tentacles in my brain is dead but they don’t know it. I can feel someone there, as though I’m silently listening to a phone conversation from an unknown third phone. First I had to hide. That is what the animal is telling me and the animal knows best.
This someone in my head, though—he knows things, far more things than anyone should know and he doesn’t know I know them too now. He can disable a ship and leave its passengers alive and so can I. Through the ducts I go until I find the power generator. All I need is some food, so I kept the dining room intact, everything else has to go, isn’t that right, Carlisle? Now it is time to pop out and say hello to the someone in my brain.
+++++
They gathered, even before the air began to grow thin. I knew they would. The ghosts came first, tearing the cabinets and refrigerators apart and devouring what they found. The growing beast inside chuckled. Vic was the last to find this place that would become his haven, and when he did the food capable of a month of travel was nearly gone. Every head swiveled at his entrance and they all chanted in flawless synchrony “kill the thing. Kill the hungry thing that’s killing us. Find Frank.” After his utter shock wore off, Vic ran from the room, eager to escape the horror in that room that would only worsen.
He would search in a frenzy; he was desperate to restore his Heaven designed and ruled by ghosts. He would run and swing that tranquilizer gun around until he had no choice but to return to the dining room. Besides, he was starting to find it hard to breathe.
The animal inside took hold of and bent to his will the someone who was trying to retreat from my mind and protect himself with reason and logic that the gremlin couldn’t hear. The animal howled his triumph.
Vic must have realized that in a few moments the difference between inside and outside would be nullified. He stepped into the dining room one last time and the door locked behind him. It’s for his own good, said Mr. Power Generator to Mr. Door.
Only one ghost still lived, and he was a bloody mess. He did not seem to notice the newcomer; all his attention was focused on the body from which he stripped chunks of meat with his red teeth. Gore formed a carpet over the tile floor and human scraps the furniture. Vic fired his gun into the last moving ghost. He beat at the door. He collapsed in a hysteric lump.
He reminds me of you, Carlisle. You were the last as well. I held my hunger for so long while you and the rest devoured each other. I think that was when this beast came. But he wouldn’t stay put. He sprouted three dog heads and roared that I eat, eat no matter the cost, eat until the beast was satisfied and all that remained were shining white trophies tucked under the bed. It will happen again, but there is still some time left I think.
The ghostly Heaven must now be a Hell and the hellish Earth now my sanctuary. This place hurtles to that planet even now, carried by its momentum. I don’t feel guilty; the Heaven without humanity was far too vulnerable to it. It would not have survived anyway. Nor would it have lasted mimicking Earth and toting humanity at its core. Perhaps by the time the wars come again we will be too spread out in nothingness and silence to annihilate the population in any great numbers. It could be that’s the antidote for war: everyone needs to just get the hell away from each other. Maybe spend some quality time alone on a wrecked ship. So there you go, Carlisle—problem solved.
The animal is growing and changing. I see his three heads clearly. He is hungry. So am I.