Dreaming in the Dark

06

Jo didn't have any questions because she was occupied with her sister. She held onto Ange as if by pertinacity alone she could revive her. Dez was more interested in the screens.

"Where is the crew?" Dez was arrested by the image of Eternity, its intricate form and structure, as if whole cities had been blocked together, using the buildings as bricks.

"It was not made for people," Kioku said. "The Maker made Eternity for himself. So he could be alone and want for nothing."

"Then why are we here?"

"Because you are a part of his mind, a part of his machine. He made you just as he made me, each with its place and purpose."

"I don't feel any purpose," Dez said. "I don't feel much of anything."

"Is that so?" Kioku crackled, and bits of ice scattered on the floor to melt away. "He must have meant for you to feel that way. There is nothing in this world he did not create with intention and desire. The Maker did not make mistakes."

"He didn't?" Dez pulled at the hair that covered her eyes. "Look at you. You're a tour guide with no one to talk to. Have you ever spoken to anyone before we came here?"

"No. There was no need."

"Why even have dreams if they are locked away? This is a museum that no one will ever visit."

"You are here," Kioku said quietly.

"We were supposed to be eaten by Spiders. We escaped because of a scary man with a nothing sword."

"There is no such thing as a nothing sword," Kioku said.

"It was an invisible sword, black around the edges, and he cut Spiders apart with it."

"There is no such sword."

"How do you know?"

"I am the memory."

"Fine. Then tell me why the Maker made this ship. Why did he need to be alone?"

Kioku activated all the screens in the hall, bombarding them with light and sound. They saw a green blue world, and the people that lived upon it, cities upon cities teeming. There were so many people they couldn't be guessed at, all shapes and kinds. It was overwhelming.

"This is where the Maker was born, on a planet crowded with billions of souls." Games and dances, lovers twirling, grocery shopping giants and infants crying murder. "Earth was full of life, too full. Humanity was at war with itself." Bombs and bursts and busted damns, homes collapsing with families inside. "Resource scarcity made conflict inevitable. No matter how technology advanced, there were always more people, and those people divided themselves into factions that fought for favors."

The globe was mapped with countries in dozens of different colors. Names flickered and changed, borders broke and expanded. It all seemed meaningless to Dez, though she knew that countless lives were being shed beneath the visual display.

"The Maker couldn't stand all the noise and fighting, so he tried to stop them with gifts that made their hoarded treasures obsolete. They fought over the gifts instead. He couldn't understand people, and they couldn't understand him, so he built his first ship and joined the stars."

A shuttle blasting into the night sky, circling the moon and finding an orbit parallel to earth.

"It wasn't far enough." Kioku shed tears of snow. "They came to him for gifts, and he sent them away. Their noise still surrounded him as electromagnetic radiation, all their entertainment and communication systems shouting in the void. He was surrounded by others, even when alone. It was in those times he conceived Eternity, the greatest of ships."

Dez was glad when the screens went dark again. Earth had been a grating, obnoxious world. She could see why he had left. But she looked at Jo, cradling Ange, and doubted.

"Didn't he ever have a friend? One friend at all?"

Kioku nodded. "You're right. And that is why he left. The friend grew tired of their place along the moon. The friend betrayed the Maker, hurt him. It is what made Eternity possible. Betrayal. The Maker knew he would never allow himself to be hurt again, and he built a ship to make it so."

"Lonely," Dez said. "He's very lonely."

"No." Kioku was firm. "He is free of loneliness, because he chose to be alone."

I have a hole in my heart, thought Dez, and even I am not that alone.

"You're going to be all right," Jo told Ange, who was stirring. "There is someone coming to help you."

Ange narrowed her eyes, and with some effort said, "Shut up."

Jo laughed. It was a clear, ringing sound, and Dez felt a part of herself relaxing because of it.

"Is that all?" she said. "He left because they hurt his feelings?"

"It is not all," Kioku said, and showed them images of graves. Countless stones with graven names, unending fields of crosses, and unmarked mounds of earth. Hospitals, wasting bodies, and those old beyond caring.

"He saw what was in the world, what infected it. This is what the friend betrayed him for, a world of always dying. Eternity with never die. It is self-sustaining. He will never die. Upon this ship, he fled from death, and death will never find him."

"All right," Dez said. "I've seen enough." The images had hurt her, though she couldn't say why. Having lived only a day, death didn't mean much to her, but the idea still spoke to the hole in her heart, and made her tired.

Kioku dispersed, leaving a puddle where he had been. Soon, they heard a large door rise and fall at the end of the hall and a white vehicle glided toward them. It stopped a dozen feet away, and the door on its side opened upward.

"It's going to be alright," Jo said. "Help me lift her."

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