“571: station 3!”
But usually they just droned on, and on, and on.
11,451
98,762,145
451
9
9
8
It was Rencki who worked out why.
“It’s to keep the connection going,” qe declared. “To keep the link between the transmitter in blackship command and the receivers open. The randomness is deliberate. If you don’t know what is next, you will always be curious.”
For the first time in a long time, I felt hate again.
I tried to touch the mind of the broadcasting mind, chained in a command centre.
Whispered:Where are you? Where are you? Show me where you are…
But they were too far gone.
Sometimes, a Pilot died.
I felt it, and it was not sad.
Their deaths were a sigh, a breathing-out, a letting-go.
The Shine noticed me after a while.
Perhaps some of the Pilots on the blackships, those who were meant to receive the numbers and relay them, chanting eternally whatever the command centre transmitted, began to blurt some of my words. Perhaps they punctuated their endless babble with a whisper ofLet go, let go, do not be afraidor a mutteredShow mewhere you are!and their operators began to notice, and someone put two and two together.
Perhaps it was Valans who realised what was happening.
Perhaps Riv.
Either way, they couldn’t do much about it. They didn’t understand enough about the dark, about the place where time runs out, to dislodge me from it. I was the worm in the machine, the ever-watching eye, an invader come from the dark.
Despite this, I was not making progress. The minds I reached for were too broken, to hollowed out to tell me anything particular, and over time the Shine grew better at keeping their Pilots numb and dumb, so even when I did manage to establish meaningful connection, slip for the briefest of moments into their eyes, there was nothing to see. Just a different kind of dark. A dark that scared me far more than the void.
Occasionally, of course, another presence.
Not a mind.
Not a soul.
Not a thing nameable with words.
It lay across the blanket of the dark, watching.
Sometimes a coil of it slithered into my soul, through my soul to the places beyond, and the Pilots of the blackships screamed, how they screamed, how they screamed and howled and wailed at a thing they could not name. I did not. I watched it as it watched me, and it felt…
Curious.
