So I leave the Passage route programmed, because at the halfway point, when my starship nearly breaches the planet’s atmosphere, I can’t resist the urge to look down at the graveyard of half-understood history.
The Passage isn’t like the Daylands or the Shadowlands. The temperature is neither searing nor freezing; the light isn’t blinding, but darkness’s cloak doesn’t reach this far. Really, in a better world, the Passage would be the ideal place for dayfolk and nightfolk to live, or at least to convene, in harmony. But that’s the thing about limited resources. The nightfolk demanded it all for themselves, and now everyone has nothing.
Starships from before the Cataclysm lie beached, half buried in the Passage’s endless sand, their paint slowly fading in the admittedly temperate sun. A wing juts free from the ground here; a stray control panel abandoned there; a shattered cockpit, its remaining transparent viewport like a monster’s jagged teeth.
I gaze out the viewport and marvel at the skeletal remains of our once-mighty civilization. Thanks to the Territory Wars over the Passage, instigated by the nightfolk, Pagonians collectively wrecked our hopes of peacefully living in the only fertile land left. And our tech, whether lost in the war or destroyed at the Cataclysm’s impact, will never be recovered, the recollection of its construction also subsequently lost.
Helical engines for hyperspace travel. Interstellar, galaxy-spanning comms for signaling Earth. Laser cannons, rifles, and pistols. Maybe even sentient AI. All sacrificed to our pride, our vanity, our insistence on being better than the other. Now we’re trapped on a far-flung world in an unknown galaxy, unreachable by the planet our ancestors left, unable to venture beyond our atmosphere, left to struggle and squabble over what fragments of tech remain.
What I wouldn’t give to go back in time, even for an instant. What I wouldn’t offer to whatever distant deity watches over us, all for a chance at a world where possibilities still bloomed. I would leave this divided planet. I would leave my ever-watchful mother.
I don’t know where I’d go, but I’d never come back.
In the copilot’s seat, Aspect beeps cheerily. “Almost in—the dark place—Kori. Where the monsters—live.”
“Don’t say that,” I say, my hands tightening aroundCharon’s controls, even though autopilot is engaged.
Aspect’s optical processors blink. “Kori doesn’t—fear—the shadow people.”
“I have a purely scientific interest in them, alongside appropriate caution. I don’tfeelanything. Not even fear.”
“Scientific—interest—in Aspect, too—Kori?”
I shake my head. “I care quite a bit about you.”
“Who else—does Kori—care for?”
I take a sharp breath. This is why programming sentient AI is so strictly forbidden. Mechs exist to mine resources, traveling where humans fear to tread, serving as passionless emissaries between light and dark. A mech questioning my interpersonal relationships is unthinkable. I don’t know if Aspect even knows what they’re saying. But the question smacks me upside the head all the same.
“My mother.” It tastes like a lie, sour, sticky sliding off my tongue. “I care for my mother.”
“Why?”
I sigh. This will be the first of many questions. Grasping at human memories for the first time, Aspect is sometimes more like a toddler than anything else.
“Because she’s my mother.”
“Why?”
“Because she made me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” I stare out at the waves upon waves of abandoned sand. “Maybe because she was lonely.”
“Like Kori—made Aspect?”
“Yes.”
“Was Kori—lonely—before Aspect’s making?”
I press my shoulders squarely into the back of my seat. “You ask too many questions.”
Aspect leans back in their own chair. Their laser-like gaze flicks about the cockpit. “Aspect does not—compute—this caring. But Aspect thinks—if Aspect did—have caring—for Kori—it would not—be—because Kori—made Aspect.”
I swallow a sudden lump in my throat. Maybe Aspect is closer to human intelligence than I’ve dared to hope. Either that, or their ability to mimic the remembered emotions I’ve implanted is becoming terrifyingly on point. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Clearly I need to reboot your vocal box.”
Aspect vigorously shakes their head. As if I hadn’t spoken at all, they continue, “If Aspect—had caring—it would be—because—Kori had caring—for Aspect first.”
