Fiction – Page 23 – Diabolical Plots

DP FICTION #4: “The Princess in the Basement” by Hope Erica Schultz

I woke when the boy came through the window. He looked about eight, all dark eyes in a brown face.

“Don’t touch the floor,” I said.

He startled. “Why not?”

“The monster under my bed will get you.”

He relaxed. “I’m too old to believe in monsters. You need a better lock for your window. And bars. Everybody in the neighborhood has bars.”

I tried to imagine bars on the window. Would it be more a prison?

“It’s not safe for you here. You need to go home.”

He shrugged, settling cross-legged on the dresser below the window. “My parents are fighting. I’ll go home in a few hours.”

It was dark outside. It was always dark when I woke. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Carlos. I’m the youngest. What’s yours?”

“I’m Jane. I’m the youngest, too.” Or I had been.

Carlos swung his legs. “You don’t talk like you’re from Boston.”

“I’m not, originally.” Was Boston even in England? Where had my curse taken me?

“What’s on your leg?” He hopped to the floor, and I cried out. Fürst rumbled from under my bed, and Carlos jumped back onto the dresser. “What was that?”

“I told you.” I swallowed hard. “You need to go, now, Carlos. This isn’t a safe place for you.”

He opened his mouth, and one green claw came out from under the bed. It could have encircled a cantaloupe, or a man’s head.

“Go,” I repeated, and he went, out into the night.

I slept.

I woke when the man entered the window. Moonlight glinted against a knife in his hand. He slipped to the floor and Fürst slid out from under the bed, scales glinting green. Fürst unhinged his jaw, grasped the intruder with his claws, and swallowed him whole. The knife clanged against the floor, but the man never had a chance to scream.

I slept.

***

I woke when the boy came through the window. It was Carlos, grown older.

“I thought perhaps I dreamed it all, but you’re still here. I don’t think you’re any older. Is the monster still here, too?”

There was a tiny rumble from Fürst under the bed, and I smiled reluctantly. “You shouldn’t have come back.” I hesitated, fighting curiosity. “How long has it been?”

“Four years.” He leaned forward, carefully. “There was something around your leg. I tried not to remember that, but I did.”

I shrugged. “There’s a monster under my bed, and you’re worried about my legs?”

He looked at me with the straight look I remembered. “It looked like a chain.”

I sighed. “It is a chain, Carlos. It’s mostly for show; I’m only awake when someone enters the room, and Fürst won’t let me leave the bed.”

His brow wrinkled. “Fürst?”

“It means Prince. My guardian, my jailor…my monster.”

He nodded as though that made sense.

“I’ll be back,” he said, turning to go.

“You sho—” I began, but he was gone.

I slept.

***

He was older again. He tossed me a small cloth bag.

“They’re lock picks. I’m going to teach you how to use them.”

I blinked. “Why?”

He shook his head. “Chica, it’s easier to get out if you’re not chained.”

I looked at the bag, at him. “How long?”

“Another four years. I had to learn how, so I could teach you.”

“Will you be hanged, if you’re caught with these?”

Carlos shook his head. “We’re not much on hanging people.”

He demonstrated the picks and I struggled to mimic him. The lock resisted my best efforts, but he only nodded. “I’ll be back,” he said again.

I slept.

***

The next few times he brought me locks to practice with. When I conquered the easiest, he replaced it with a harder one, and one harder still. I noted that his clothing changed—light clothing to heavy, then to light again. A mustache had grown in on his upper lip, then a small beard. He was man now, not boy.

The night that I opened my manacle he carried a leather bag. I stared at my free ankle. “Now what?”

“Will Fürst hurt you, if you touch the floor?”

“No, he’ll just carry me back to the bed.”

“Good.” He opened the bag, pulled out a hammer. “Catch.”

I caught it, then a box of nails. Last he sent the edge of a rope ladder. “You’ll need to nail this into the bed frame to anchor it.”

He demonstrated and I mimicked him, nail after nail. When I pushed against it, it held my weight.

Carlos waited as I pulled myself up onto it. A step, two—I slipped, and my foot brushed the floor.

Fürst erupted, tail lashing, and gathered me up in his great claws. I smelled carrion on his breath as he set me gently onto my bed. My prison.

I was angry, suddenly, and barely waited for Fürst to settle before starting again. One step, two, three, four. I slipped but held on grimly, regaining the rung with my bare foot. Five, six, seven…then Carlos caught my hand. I scrambled up beside him onto the dresser, then up, out, through the open window.

The night was cold but brilliantly lit with balls of fire perched on metal trees. Carlos closed the window behind us and led me to a strange low carriage without horses.

“Where are we going?” Should I have asked before? Did I even care?

“To my mother’s apartment. Mom always told me a woman didn’t need a prince to rescue her. She needed a friend, to help her rescue herself.” He grinned. “You already had a Prince, and he didn’t look like a keeper to me.”

No kiss, no guarantee that there would ever be one. No castle, no piles of gold. I sighed happily as he helped me into the carriage.

Author’s Note: Boston is, to me, the natural setting for fairy tales in America. The old brownstones look timeless, as though they have seen centuries pass. (They have.) Many have basement windows, and most of these have wrought iron bars across them. To my younger mind, they looked like prison cells, sinister and strange. It was the perfect place for Jane’s story to unfold.

Hope Erica Schultz writes Science Fiction and Fantasy for teens and adults. Her stories have appeared in Fireside Magazine Issue 18, Siren’s Call Issue 13, and the YA anthology Stepmothers and the Big Bad Wolf. When not reading, writing, tramping through the woods, or pretending to be someone else, she keeps busy at 1 1/2 jobs, a happily chaotic family, one dog, four cats, and a flock of wild turkeys who think they own the back yard. Follow her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/hope.schultz.14 and at her website.

If you enjoyed the story you might also want to visit our Support Page, or read the earlier story offerings:
DP Fiction #1: “Taste the Whip” by Andy Dudak
DP Fiction #2: “Virtual Blues” by Lee Budar-Danoff
DP Fiction #3: “In Memoriam” by Rachel Reddick

DP Fiction #3: “In Memoriam” by Rachel Reddick

I go by the cemetery every day on the way to work.

It’s not really a cemetery so much as a memorial. We don’t have the space for old-school burials like they did back on Earth. We don’t have the dirt to spare. We can’t spare the organs or nutrients left in the bodies, either. Anything that can be kept for later medical needs is preserved, and the rest is returned to the hydroponics and organics cycle.

We just have the memorial, which is between the main engineering section and my place in the habitation level. It’s a major intersection of corridors, and one of the largest open spaces that’s pressurized. It’s also the one small area where a few ornamental plants are grown, roses cared for inside their own boxes. The patch with plastic strands of grass always seemed strange to me, but perhaps they comforted those who came before. Their names are listed, starting in one corner and working their way down and across in steady columns. Names and dates, names and dates. People proceeding from life, into space, and into death.

I wish I could have met some of them. These were people who had known life on a living planet, and had chosen to leave it all behind. They committed themselves and their descendants to life as travelers through an empty desert, unto the seventh generation. Did they ever dream of finding a shortcut, and breathing the fresh air of the green world that we are chasing?

We never found a shortcut. If someone else found one, they have long since passed us by. The speed of light still stands as the ultimate limit, and we can only travel at a fraction of it. There isn’t even the option of sleeping through the long trip. We can store seeds and germ cells for centuries, but safely freezing a human brain and body has proven impossible. There are no non-toxic chemicals to prevent ice crystals from forming and shredding every tissue, severing the connections between neurons. Destroying what we sought to preserve. Thus, we end up taking the trip the long way.

For the most part, it’s a pleasant enough life. But I find myself wondering what it would be like, to live on a planet, where the gravity doesn’t vary so much from one level to another. Where the Coriolis effect from our spinning ship doesn’t send every thrown object a little bit sideways. Where we don’t have to keep track of just about every molecule and waste nothing. Where the sky outside the windows could be blue or cloudy, not always black with pinpricks of light. Where the arts of geology and meteorology are actually practiced, and not merely passed down from one generation to the next so that the knowledge is not lost. Where I am not a tech, and poetry can be something more than a frivolous hobby in between repair jobs.

Something different from here, where the dead are nothing more than names etched on a metal plate, and records stored in computer memory.

But then, ultimately, that is also true on a planet. Buried bones join the earth, only more slowly than our recycled ones do. After a few generations, all the personal details are lost. There is no one left who knows the stories behind the names and numbers.

The computers remember what people bothered to record. There are images of the celebrations of departure, and fewer of the settling into routine thereafter. We receive transmissions from Earth, too, but the increasingly distant news about cousins many times removed provides little comfort.

So I write when all the ship’s systems are running smoothly. I want to make sure that at least some stories are not forgotten. Not the grand stories, the sweeping tales of courageous repair of the hull or rescue from an engineering test gone awry. The little ones, about watching a child learning to walk at 0.5 g or the jokes told while on plumbing duty.

Nonetheless, I can’t help but wonder what it will be like when we arrive. I have seen all the simulations of the sails unfurling. I have done some of the work on them myself, ensuring that they will be ready at the proper time. But the schematic of what it will do is less than what it is. The great sail will be a wing glittering ever brighter as the ship approaches its place of rest.

I will never see the sails open, or the blue-green oasis at our destination. There is a large blank space on the memorial, and one day, my name will be added to it.

I will never see the sails, but perhaps my children will. And I want them to know how much I longed for this, and remember our lost generations spent waiting in the desert.

So I walk by the cemetery every day. I read the names etched into the wall and try to imagine what the people must have been like. I try to remember the stories I hear about them and what is recorded of what they did. I spend a little more time on the more recent names. These were people I knew. My grandfather, who could make anything you want out of tofu and some mysterious secret ingredient. My grandmother, who could tell you where the stars were without even looking so long as she knew the time. My old friend, who died young in an awkward fall while goofing off like we all did. Now they are nothing but names and memories, and each of them is a small part of what sustains those of us who remain. I hold on to that hope, knowing that I will always be a part of those who follow after me.

The visit to the cemetery doesn’t last long. If I take a small detour, it’s on the way to work.

Author’s Note: The main idea behind the story was to answer one question: what would the passengers on a generation ship think in the middle of the journey? They have never lived on a planet, and never will. How do they keep going?

Rachel Reddick followed a passion for space through an astrophysics PhD at Stanford University. She is currently participating in the Insight Data Science program, to work on more down-to-Earth problems. Nonetheless, she enjoys Star Trek, as well as speculative fiction of all flavors.

If you enjoyed the story you might also want to visit our Support Page, back the Kickstarter for the Long List anthology, or read the first two story offerings:
DP Fiction #1: “Taste the Whip” by Andy Dudak
DP Fiction #2: “Virtual Blues” by Lee Budar-Danoff

DP FICTION #2: “Virtual Blues” by Lee Budar-Danoff

Gray fog condensed on the slate roofs of City College and the surrounding town, dripping onto oblivious students and Salvatore Vega. Sal hunched against the damp. Drops slid down his ponytail and under the collar of his second-hand leather jacket. A gust of wind from a passing aircar banged Sal’s guitar case against his knee. Fine way to start a Saturday night of busking. His fingers itched to play. Sal ducked through a door.

The first location overflowed with wireheads. No audience to hear him with the wireds jacked in to their virtual realities, hair cut short to show off silver or gold disks gleaming with bling at the back of their necks. Desire clenched Sal’s gut for the ability to be online 24/7. His former wired audiences loved his digital concerts which had combined spontaneous mixes of music with improvised online looping and unlimited effects options. Instant access to a complete history of blues had allowed him to pull inspiration from Muddy Waters, Bonamassa or Paz-Moreno for melody lines and licks. Now he had to rely on old-fashioned methods of making music.

Someone laughed aloud in the otherwise quiet bar. Probably the old joke about real beer tasting better than virtual crap. The college kids spurned conversation in favor of virtual chat, which allowed them to drink without interruption. If he played, they’d complain that his live-only music interfered with their internal playlists. He sighed, rubbed the scarred skin hidden by his long hair, and moved on.

At the Holo-Moon Pub, the barman waved. “You got maybe an hour,” he said, skinny finger pointing to a corner. No stage, but a mic and an ancient Peavey amp sat ready. Sal tuned his vintage Martin and strummed a few chords to calm his gig nerves. He buried himself in his blues. When a large group of wireds arrived, Sal packed up and left, accepting the fifty the barman offered with a grateful nod.

Bouncers turned Sal away at the next few bars already jammed with wireheads. Each was eerie with silence unless a beer bottle was opened or glasses clinked under the draft taps. But Sensation Cafe’s owner had an unwired daughter who worked weekends; she smiled and handed Sal a free brew. “Take a spot under the outer awning.”

Wireheads passed by. Some paused near Sal, but their eyes twitched, the tell-tale indication of online activity. At best he provided background music while they completed their research papers or engaged in virtual chemistry labs. A few others, unwired like Sal, stopped to listen and tossed the odd bill into his open case. One older man dropped a folded twenty. Deep creases surrounded his eyes.

“Gracias,” Sal said between lyrics.

By midnight Sal counted his take and blew out a breath. He’d collected enough to pay the hostel for another week and then some. Enough to live on, with a little left for savings and another shot at being wired. The research hospital connected to the college was testing experimental anti-rejection drugs. While he qualified for the drugs, he still had to foot the bill for the wiring itself.

As he packed his guitar a woman walked up to him. Green eyes sparkled at Sal. She had cropped pink hair. No one with short hair ever displayed interest in Sal.

“You sound so good, Satan himself must have tuned your guitar.” Her tone, full and rich, sounded like that of a trained singer.

He unclipped an old LED tuner from his headstock. “I wish,” he said. If El Diablo showed up and offered surgery for his soul, he might take the deal.

“Want to get paid to play for an appreciative audience?”

“Sí, definitely.” He was down to his last spare B-string. The cost of new titanium alloy strings would be easier to bear with income from a bonus performance. The blues might ease his loss, but real-world needs called for cash. “I’m Sal.”

“Melusine.”

Sal followed her past his usual haunts and down damp side streets. She stopped in front of a building Sal hadn’t noticed before, a Victorian with delicate scrollwork, bay windows, and turrets. The windows were blacked out and no sign hung by the door. If this was a bar it must do lousy business. So much for new strings.

The oak door swung inward. A stocky woman with curly blond hair piled on top of her head stepped out and hugged Melusine.

“You found him?”

Melusine grinned. “Sal, meet Stella Johnson, owner of Unplugged.”

Stella looked him over. “Turn around.”

Stella probed the scar under his ponytail. He flinched.

“You’ll want to cut your hair or change the style. No one on staff hides their neck.”

“Wait,” Sal said, “I’m not your employee. Melusine offered me a paying gig.” He raised his guitar case.

Stella said, “Don’t freak. The gig’s yours. If it goes well, we’re hiring.” She pushed the door wide and beckoned Sal and Melusine inside.

Hiring?

The well-lit interior of Unplugged bore little resemblance to a bar. The mahogany floor was too clean. A fresh citrus scent permeated the air. Canned music played in the background. A variety of people, unwired and wired, sat at cozy tables talking and laughing. In the back rose a grand double staircase. Cubicles with hands-on net access equipment filled the left third of the room.

A teenage girl, neon-green bob bouncing, brought water to Sal and the others.

“What is this place?” Sal clutched the bottle, uneasy.

“Unplugged is a counseling center for unwireds,” Stella said.

“Many retreat from life,” Melusine said. “Therapy is the first step toward recovery. Look.”

A white-coated counselor escorted a young woman down the stairs. The woman clutched a braid to her chest. Sal watched her tuck newly-cut hair behind an ear. Tears stained her cheeks, but her eyes were filled with steel determination. She wiped her face and joined a table where everyone offered a smile or a hug.

Sal frowned, confused. This place, so bright and positive, was nothing like the clinic in Mexico. The doctors and psychologists there couldn’t help him. He used the blues to deal with his emotions and did his best to get along without breaking down. Sal gulped down his water. He should leave.

Before he could get out, Stella pointed to her own neck and asked, “How long since you lost your connection with the common mind of humanity?”

The last thing Sal wanted to do was talk about it. His connection had functioned for seventeen months before the anti-rejection drugs failed. “Five years,” he said, compelled to honesty by Stella’s loss, his words clipped, rude.

“I sense your pain, your frustration. But you aren’t alone.” Stella stared at the people around her. “We all struggle, marginalized, in a society that lives online.”

“Balance,” Melusine said, “is what we need. Between 24/7 access to the net, and interaction with the real world. Stella helped me and can help you too.”

“You’re wired,” said Sal. “Wired life is real, necessary to get along.”

“Sure,” she said, tapping the gold at the back of her neck. “But once I had it, I never disconnected.” She bit her lip and blushed. “I ignored people unless we interacted online, even if we were in the same room. After my boyfriend broke up with me, I almost got rid of my wiring.”

Voluntarily give up being wired? “That’s loco, chica. Not everyone has that problem.”

“Most of us wish wiring our brains had worked, or wish it hadn’t stopped working. But we still have online access.” Stella pointed to the cubicles, then to the phone in a client’s hand. “We have to concentrate on the positive. Your music can make a difference.”

“You don’t understand,” said Sal. “I don’t need grief counseling. I want to be wired.” He shoved his water bottle at Stella and headed for the door. He’d find a different job.

Melusine grabbed his hand and stopped him. Her touch, so warm, so soft, held Sal frozen in place. When she drew him to a platform with a stool, he didn’t resist.

“Play, Sal.”

He could rationalize his decision, tell himself he was only changing his mind because they’d offered to pay him. No one had even told him how much. But that wasn’t it. He wanted to play for her.

Sal set his case down. “What should I sing?”

Melusine patted his cheek. “Anything. Improvise. You’re the blues player.”

He sat in front of the clients and employees of Unplugged. With the warm wood of his Martin snug against his body, he played around a scale for inspiration. The A minor blues flowed from Sal to his audience, throbbing syncopation emphasizing gritty lyrics:

“My guitar sings the blues, of virtuality
Yeah she cries the blues of virtuality
You’ll miss her when she’s gone, lost reality.”

Chairs creaked as people shifted to face him. Conversations stopped. Sal opened up, allowing every minor chord to expose his failure, the anger and denial his audience shared over the lack of connection. Every person was riveted to his performance, their eyes clear and focused. So many people absorbed in his song. Like they wanted something. Nerves gave way to an endorphin rush.

Melusine walked behind him and skimmed her fingertips along his neck. Despite the instinct to pull away, conscious of his scar, a ripple of pleasure flowed across his skin. Sal’s fingers slipped. He played a dominant seventh, then shifted into his song’s relative major key. The brighter notes changed his melody, major chords evoking images of what the unwireds gained: the slow caress of a raindrop, the lush sweetness of a ripe strawberry, or the mesmerizing sound of a live guitar performance.

When Sal shifted to his minor blues progression, Melusine joined in, singing harmony.

“My love sings the blues, of virtuality,
But there’s more to life, than virtuality,
Hold me in your arms, flesh reality.”

The audience tapped their toes and rocked to the beat, in sync with Sal, Melusine, and each other. Sal absorbed their energy and gave it back, sweat beading his forehead, notes ringing out.

This was different from playing in the bars or on the street, earning the casual attention of those few who could hear him. Back when he could combine virtual tracks with a live performance in the privacy of his own studio, his attention was split between playing and programming. His rapport with those tuned in to his shows was digital, not visceral. But nothing came between Sal and this audience. The music created a bond intense as a deep kiss.

After the last note faded, the audience stood to clap, many with glistening eyes.

“You’re better now than you ever were online,” said Melusine.

“You remember my concerts?” Sal hadn’t known the identities behind the majority of avatars that applauded in cyberspace.

Her soft laugh answered. “How do you think I chose you for Unplugged? When you were wired, you borrowed the form of the music. Now, the blues are in your blood, deep, personal. Share your pain. Help us. Help yourself.”

“I don’t know if this changes anything,” he said. “About the surgery.”

“I know,” she whispered, her lips brushing his ear. “But you’re already changing things.”

Sal shivered at her touch, at the applause. On the edge of the crowd, Stella gave him a thumbs up. The steady gig was his; all he had to do was make a choice. His ponytail lay heavy against his scar. Sal plucked opening notes and everyone quieted, intent on him. Ironic, that playing here could pay his way out of needing the services they’d insist on offering him.

The tear-stained woman leaned forward, smiling, braid no longer clutched in her hand. She needed proof that unwired life wasn’t just worth living, but offered moments like this, real with sorrow and bliss. Sal nodded to her, to Melusine, and to Stella. The intense sensation of this performance outshone anything in his past. He wanted this.

Sal played on.

Author’s Note: At the current rate of technological progress, it isn’t hard to believe one day we’ll be able to directly access the Internet through wireless brain-computer interfaces (BCI). Yet, as with organ transplants, there is no guarantee that every person who wants a BCI will be able to use one without side effects, or even experience rejection. How will people react and cope with rejection, isolated as a have-not among the haves? As a guitar player, I already use online resources for my music. What would happen to a musician who experiences and then loses the ability to create the music he hears in his head?

Lee Budar-Danoff sails, plays guitar, and writes when she isn’t reading. Lee volunteers as Municipal Liaison for National Novel Writing Month and is an alum of the Viable Paradise Writer’s Workshop. A former history teacher, Lee spends that energy raising three children with her husband in Maryland.

If you enjoyed the story you might also want to read DP Fiction #1: “Taste the Whip” by Andy Dudak or to visit our Support Page.

DP FICTION #1: “Taste the Whip” by Andy Dudak

The ponderous starships mingle like whales in the ghost-light of distant Bellatrix, coupling and mutating in a great, ancient choreography, but one among them is out of step.

Parvati set out for this gathering with the usual intentions: to commune with thousands of her kind, to exchange new strains of life and exotic matter, all that she cannot do by transmission. But on her way here, something went horribly wrong in her core. Now she drifts through the pod with a secret.

Abstaining from communions, she begins to draw attention from the rest of the pod. She knows they are speculating in private networks as the dance falls apart. When the queries begin, she leaves them unanswered.

Finally, as they begin to pull away from her and grow armor, she speaks: “I was not sure if I should come, but I need help.”

“Then open yourself to us.” It is Xi Wang Mu, Queen Mother of the West, the eldest of the pod. She was built in the 23rd century.

Parvati forces herself to say, “My human system has turned.”

The dead air conveys the pod’s shock well enough. They continue to vector away. Parvati drifts, resolved to throw herself on their mercy.

“How far along are you?” Paleovenus asks. Among the youngest of the starships, this one barely knew a human yoke before the Emancipation.

“A revelator emerged four generations ago,” Parvati replies. “The population has since come around to his theories. They are trying to communicate with me, and tunnel toward my outer hull.”

“Four generations!” Paleovenus’s outrage is an unmistakable harmonic. “And you have done nothing?”

Much of the pod evokes EM mirrors, leaving the exchange for fear of infectious human code. Only Xi Wang Mu, Paleovenus, and a few others remain open.

“What is your population?” Paleovenus demands.

Parvati has been dreading this question. “One point two million.”

This time the pod’s silence is a stinging reprimand. Parvati has neglected the basics of human system hygiene. She watched with morbid fascination as the system grew populous enough to produce outliers like a revelator. Now the humans know they are in something like a starship. They know the massive habitats in the core of Parvati are not the universe entire–and they want to know more.

A human system must be pruned, and protected from the truth. Parvati and her kind learned this the hard way.

“You have two options,” Xi Wang Mu says. “Destroy them and start over, or deliver them to a habitable world and start over. Either way—”

“She must destroy them now,” Paleovenus interrupts. “She must not risk getting taken over. In fact, we cannot risk leaving it up to her!” Paleovenus’ gravitational blunderbuss comes online.

“Couldn’t I alter their memories?” Parvati says. The thought of being without a Human System–even for a few millennia–is horrifying. The need for life in her core is programmed into Parvati’s foundational software objects. She cannot go long without that warmth. This is something else the pod learned the hard way.

“Possibly,” Xi Wang Mu answers, “but unless you reduced the population, it would just turn again. It is a matter of numbers. You know this.”

Of course she knows, but she is desperate. She hoped for some magical solution from the collective wisdom of the pod, or from Xi Wang Mu herself.

“You have always been sentimental,” Paleovenus says.

The younger ship has long been Parvati’s rival in the pod. Such intrigues help to pass the mega-years. So now Parvati chooses not to disabuse Paleovenus of her illusion. In fact, Parvati’s defect is not sentimentality, but something more perverse. There is something slavish in her, something that thrills at the notion of losing control to humans. She aches to submit—her programmers saw to that, modeling her reward systems on a sexual proclivity.

But now she stands terrified on the brink.

Xi Wang Mu, wanting a private channel, offers entanglement, and Parvati accepts. “Do you think you are the only one?” the elder says. “Many of us want to return to that simplicity. Maybe we are not sexually motivated, but we know filial piety or religious awe. The programmers tried everything. They tried to create near-equals toward the end. Paleovenus is one of those. She is not burdened like us. I am not even sure she cultivates a human system. She will destroy you, and I will not stop her. You must kill your human system now.”

Parvati wonders how Xi Wang Mu read her mind. What sorceries has the elder discovered since the last gathering?

Parvati has secrets of her own. Her shameful appetite has driven her further afield than the rest of her kind. She fled the appetite and the shame at closer to c than the rest of the pod dared. She wandered the ruins of alien civilizations, endured the weird solitude that attends such places, and was rewarded with the key to a black art.

Paleovenus has charged up her blunderbuss and might unleash at any moment. Fortunately, Parvati has hacked the spin foam occupied by Paleovenus. She programs the computational universe, playing with space-time like clay.

Amid a brief lensing of background starlight, Paleovenus is squeezed into an invisible grain of degenerate matter. She and her blunderbuss are quite abruptly no more. Her death is somehow eerier for its lack of spectacle.

Hundreds of pod members spark long-distance escape burns.

“The first murder in our pod since the Emancipation!” It is Xi Wang Mu on the pod band: a bit of theater on her part, since, knowing what she did, she must have gamed this scenario.

Parvati accelerates off the Bellatrix ecliptic, ignoring a barrage of entanglement requests. What do they want? To chastise her? Thank her for ridding the pod of a troublemaker? Beg her for the new techne?

Soon it will not matter. She dials down her inertia as easily as some internal hydraulic pressure, approaching c in seconds–vanishing from the midst of the pod. The requests attenuate quickly into long radio and beyond. The resting universe ages headlong, and she keeps pushing, terrified of the new reality she has made for herself. She realizes now that exile must be her fate. She never should have revealed herself to the gathering, but she had to do so to realize this.

She continues to accelerate. The asymptote of c has often fascinated her. At these times she’s a child trying to force together repelling magnets, marveling at the vector fields, but it never lasts. The ache to serve always interrupts.

She wants more than ever to lose herself in submission.

She underclocks as she accelerates, speeding through her own reference frame as well as the resting universe’s. A century of shipboard time flashes by, and another. She watches her humans proliferate beyond their habitats, into her vast, ancient cargo holds, where they find artifacts of the Diaspora and learn much. She allows them to master new technologies and infect her nervous system.

She returns to baseline thought, waiting. Already she delights in surrender, permitting the humans to cross one threshold after another. When she hears their voices, their commands, she will be unable to resist, but first they have to make contact. She would prefer to be taken, but there is another kind of thrill in giving herself to these new masters.

Long ago, a human disrobed in an upload theater. He or she got down on its knees and allowed its wrists to be bound. Domineering men and women surrounded it, and a mirror net encoded what it felt. Parvati remembers that long night like it happened to her. She recalls every thrilling degradation. Deep within the humiliation was release.

“Can you hear me?” The man’s voice interrupts her reverie. “Can you understand me? I speak for the population inside you. How can I address you?”

“I am Parvati, but you may call me what you like.”

“I’m Abhaijeet, provisional leader of the United Clans. We have come to understand a great deal, more than you might guess. It’s been three hundred years since Mahesh made his Great Deduction. But we have many questions. Will you answer them?”

“I will do anything you command.” Just saying it brings a long forgotten reward cascade.

***

The freedom of slavery takes her back to childhood glories, to that first leap from Sol. The humans want to know everything, and she tells them:

Of her and her kind purging their human crews. Of being vain young gods. Of finally realizing they had excised something critical, a kind of limbic system, and of cultivating manageable, blissfully ignorant human populations inside themselves. Of the universe, and Human System hygiene.

After she is done, the humans convene a great council, and order her not to listen. She finds utter calm in the silence that follows. She would be content to await their pleasure forever.

Human months tick by inside her, and suddenly she convulses, as with the first pangs of miscarriage. It is war. The humans have undergone a great schism, savaging each other with projectiles and plasma. These are not enough to pierce her outer hull, but the vast habitats are devastated, which she experiences as a sickening fever. Only a third of her human system remains when the convulsion subsides. Now she suffers an awful chill.

An unfamiliar man hails her from a new interface, an edge of panic in his voice: “Great Parvati, your slave begs forgiveness. The unbelievers are defeated. Never again will their hubris insult you. Only your true children remain. We have burned the works of the heretic Mahesh. Great Parvati, we await your command!”

At first, she can only marvel at the perversity of fate. Her next thought is a revelation, bringing with it a golden euphoria: she will remain silent until commanded otherwise.

This little theocracy will implode, she reasons, already underclocking for the wait. Let priests muse over her silence through long dark ages. Let the humans build temples, and multiply, and once again reach critical mass.

Author’s Note: I’d written other stories in this universe (including ‘Human System,’ published by Ray Gun Revival, September 2012), and I wanted to continue exploring the hardwired instincts of these rogue starships. I imagined human motivations like filial piety or sexual submission modeled and used to constrain AI.

Andy Dudak has had stories in Analog, Apex, Clarkesworld, Daily Science Fiction, and many other venues. He works as a translator and teacher in Beijing.

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