rickgriffin

A Vast And Endless Sky 6

Added 2022-03-15 06:40:05 +0000 UTC

I hadn't realized it'd been a year since I touched this. And I really like this story! Anyway here's more Rees and Thassiter. Comments appreciated!

Thassiter’s quarters were, for the enormous ssarith, quite tiny, even if it was as large as Rees’s entire house. The space had barely enough room for the bed, which looked more like a round nest with a pole in the center of it—probably to wrap his massive tail around. Other than that and the desk that seemed barely large enough for Rees, there seemed to barely be enough room for Thassiter to even squeeze himself.

Rees was about to ask about this when Thassiter tapped a button, and the back wall of the room opened up into a much larger space, a round arena surrounded by doors back to seventeen other rooms. The middle of the room had a shiny black sphere on a thin spire, the purpose of which Rees couldn’t divine.

“Our group’s lounge,” Thassiter said. “I am retiring early today to get you used to your sleeping quarters, but we have at least three of your hours to do what we like in here.”

There weren’t any seats in the lounge, but the glowing blue floor was rather soft, if oddly textured under Rees’s paws, ribbed gel pads.

“Why do you keep saying it like that?” Rees asked.

“Like what?”

“’Three of your hours’, you sound like a trashy sci-fi movie. Yeah I know it’s my hours, you probably have your own units of timekeeping…”

“Sorry. The translator AI insisted on that to be clear. I can have it stop doing that.”

“Oh.” Rees lowered his ears. “You don’t have to, it’s kinda cute…”

Thassiter’s scales flexed in an expression that Rees could not read.

“And that’s going to be difficult, too…” Rees folded his arms. “I can’t read your expression much at all. If you’re making one.”

“Yes, we are an expressive people,” Thassiter said absolutely flatly. “We do have a solution in that case, though, but not everyone thinks it a very elegant.”

Thassiter removed the voice synthesizer off his neck, and opened up the panel that seemed before to be the only blank wall, leading to yet another one of the pneumatic tubes. It provided him with a similar, slightly curved device that snapped to his neck, only this one was had a shiny black cover. Thin green lines appeared on the black surface, giving the impression of a cartoon face, ears nose and all. It wasn’t exactly like how a montrose would draw a face, but it was close enough.

The face winked at him.

Rees tilted his head. “Are you… doing that?”

The face mirrored the head tilt at the same time that Thassiter did. “Yes, the AI reads my expression and selects a known equivalent on this screen. We use this for certain diplomatic situations, but a lot of people feel that it is more distracting than helpful. This has been set to appropriate expressions for your religious and ethnic group.”

Rees was about to comment on that—he wasn’t sure what the ssarith believed that all entailed, given his ‘religious group’ was one he felt more and more alienated from as time went on. But the more he got comfortable here, the more curious he got. He climbed onto Thassiter’s tail, the only spot that was really an appropriate seat—Thassiter’s screen made the little “liver” symbol that indicated warm feelings. Rees blushed.

“Um,” Rees asked, “So do your people have like… a religion?”

“No we do not,” Thassiter said.

Rees considered this for a long moment. “That’s… kinda refreshing.”

“Oh?” Thassiter asked. “Are you not happy with yours?”

“Well it’s not like I have a choice,” Rees said. “Religion is just one of those things that happens to you, so far as I’m concerned. I’ve read the Book of Life cover to cover more than once and it’s just kinda… stopped making sense. The words are just words, all isolated from one another. The Good and True Rituals are just things we do. But everyone around me just seems so happy to be… well… dull. It’s like they prefer the world to be very tiny.”

“For some people that is the case,” Thassiter said. “We have noticed many religions among the people of the known galaxy. For the most part, a religion is merely a story one tells to their population that helps them make sense of their place in the universe on a cosmic level.”

“I suppose that’s the case,” Rees said. “It’s just on my planet, it always seems to be so corrupt. Montrose just use that story to tell people what their place is—and their place is to be good little pawns that serve the wealthy. And my mom pretends that’s just the problem with other sects and ours is better than all that but I’m not really sure that’s the case.”

“Then perhaps that is something that will change,” Thassiter said. “Many cultures all over the galaxy practice religion without such ulterior motives. It is not impossible to return a cosmic story to its place of hope.”

“But I just feel so burned out on it all. I don’t want a story, because all a story seems to do is make everyone very stuffy and uptight about being so very correct about the universe.” Rees asked, “I mean… is there even a Goddess?”

“I would not know,” Thassiter said. “If you are asking of the reality of gods, I have seen no such evidence of their workings, nor would I believe that such beings would inherently demand my worship without clear and just recompense.”

“Then what doyou believe in? What makes everything… worth it to a ssarith?”

“I believe in the continuance of my people,” Thassiter said. “Though not at the direct expense of others. I believe in defending the innocent and creating the most good for the most people, in some cases surrendering my life should it be called for. And I have faith in my people to keep me truthfully informed about the facts of the situations as they stand.”

Rees kicked his paws gently in the air. “I was all ready to join your religion until you said that last one. I don’t know if I could implicitly trust my leaders to do the right thing.”

“It is not a religion,” Thassiter said. “There is no dogma associated with it, ßarith merely tend to feel things like these innately. Do you not feel a desire to do right by your social group?”

“I suppose,” Rees said. “Most people want to be good. Although my mom says montrose can’t be good unless they submit to the Goddess.”

“It is an understandable but reductive position,” Thassiter said. “Goodness is, to many people, relative only to their social group.”

“But that’s stupid!” Rees exclaimed. “Yeah I can understand that sometimes you gotta defend yourself against outsiders who are actively harming you, but people can be good without having to mirror each others’ beliefs exactly!”

Thassiter nodded, and tapped something onto his pad. “There is a species that does this specifically. The geordians mirror beliefs of their in-group reflexively.”

“That’d be nice,” Rees said. “Maybe then I could stop overthinking and just… you know… live the way I’m expected to.”

Suddenly, the sphere in the center of the room lit up—and above it, a pair of feline montrosoids, though with much smaller tails. Rees jumped to his paws.

“Whoa!” he exclaimed. “You didn’t tell me this was a holographic projector!”

“These are examples the geordians,” Thassiter said. “I thought a visual example might help. The geordians once had gods, but they have long been under the control of the krakun, who do not particularly appreciate religion in any form. Still, the geordians tend to revere legendary and folk heroes much the way some of your people do for saints.”

Rees stared up in fascination. “There’s… more?”

“I did say the krakun have conquered dozens,” Thassiter said. “And thankfully more yet have not been conquered.”

“You said something about… lio?”

Thassiter changed out the picture. The images appeared to be life size, and the lio were quite tall—even if nowhere near the size of a ssarith. Both the male and females had long manes, tied up in weavings behind their heads. And both looked as though they were carved out of marble.

“Do they worship anyone?”

“Theirs is an inclusive story,” Thassiter said. “I generalize, but most lio worship at least one of the four great prophets, and believe that all religions, no matter how distantly conceived, are a part of that same religion.”

“Do they have holy wars?”

“A few,” Thassiter said. “Cults do pop up from time to time and sway many to close their ears to all but their leader. But it is not a phenomenon inherent to the religion.”

“See, why can’t we be more like that?” Rees asked, throwing his paws up at the insubstantial figures. “Like, people should at least be able to admit that it’s a bug rather than a feature…” He then tilted his ears. “…what do krakun look like?”

Thassiter tapped something into the pad. The lio vanished, and for a while, Rees waited for the krakun to appear. Thassiter gestured up with his nose—which was followed by an up arrow on his translator screen.

Rees looked up, then nearly fell over. “Gys help me!” he cried. “How fucking big are they!?”

The krakun didn’t even fit inside the little room. The hologram created the illusion that the beast existed outside of the cylindrical walls. This specimen was covered in red scales, stood on all fours like an animal, and had a crest of horns about its head, mouth full of sharp teeth. Its eyes shone with what he could only read as a glaring hatred. Rees had never seen nor even conceived anything like it before.

“Twelve meters to the shoulder,” Thassiter said, hardly reacting to Rees’s dramatic doubling over. “They worship no one but themselves, and it is to the detriment of others.”

“You fight those things?!”

“Not claw-to-claw if that is what you think,” Thassiter said. “Though we are one of the few species that is capable of even harming them without weapons. Alas, in space combat they rarely put themselves on the front lines, preferring instead to push their slave forces out in front.”

Rees swallowed, still staring up at the monster. “Thassiter?”

“Yes, Rees?”

“You have my permission to conquer Ar if it means keeping them out.”

“I will note that,” Thassiter said with a satisfied nod. The display screen also nodded.

But even after Thassiter dismissed the image, Rees couldn’t help but just sit and contemplate his position in all of this. It was weird enough to find himself on an alien spaceship, talking to a giant alien serpent, but even with the initial hiccup in their meeting, Rees had quickly grown to like Thassiter. But Thassiter was trying to be liked. If he’d instead been abducted to a krakun ship…

He would be nothing. And that was the truth of the universe. Rees was very, extraordinarily lucky… and millions, probably billions more were not. He just didn’t realize it until just then.

“Rees? Are you okay?” Thassiter asked.

“I… think I just understood why some people would rather the world be much smaller,” Rees said, wrapping his large tail around himself.

Thassiter’s emotive screen frowned with wilted ears.

“I guess I’ll get used to it,” Rees said, staring off distantly. “I have to. I don’t really have a choice. But it’s… a lot to take in.”

“Do not worry too much,” Thassiter said. “With the entire ßarith fleet here, a direct attack by Krakuntec is unlikely to occur in many decades. The most we expect to see is sabotage and disinformation by their agents, and eventually testing skirmishes, but we will be intercepting the brunt of that. You will, more likely than not, be okay.”

“But the universe is really like that? Just… a roll of the dice and your entire species is enslaved?”

“The universe is not innately fair or just,” Thassiter said. “Only people can be.”

“And the assholes just keep winning,” Rees said quietly, “and they keep getting to be in charge.”

Sensing that he wasn’t making things better, Thassiter changed his tack. “Rees… it is a lot to take in, but you do not need to consider it all at once. It is something that takes time to understand as you re-examine your priorities.”

Rees nodded. “But…”

“How about we watch one of your stories?”

Rees perked his ears. “You have our stories?”

“We are tapped into your satellites,” Thassiter said. “And we have recorded a great deal of your audiovisual broadcasts. I have been curious to view some. Do you have any recommendations?”

He held the pad to Rees, which had a long, long list of items written in Tannic. They didn’t seem to be in any particular grouping besides alphabetical order, so he just scrolled down the list with his finger like he’d seen Thassiter do. He thought up a movie or TV show in his mind, and then scrolled to see if it was there. Every time, it was.

“I do not wish to rush you,” Thassiter said, “But if you want to watch anything of significant length—”

“If this is your introduction to montrose cinema,” Rees said, “Then the first thing you need to see is Nineteen Swords. It’s based on a fantasy novel from a hundred years ago, and oh Gys help me, the leading lady is gorgeous, but that’s not the point, the thing is that she has eighteen husbands who each have a special power granted by their affiliation with the zodiac, and—”

“Is it a true story?” Thassiter interrupted.

Rees blinked. “…no.”

Thassiter nodded and tapped his screen, and his display nodded in firm approval. “Okay, just making sure. Let us begin.”