The Last Human IV - 69 - Of Old Friends

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New moss bearded the ribs of the Ark, cutting lush green lines against a bright, blue sky. Clouds built white castles in the distance, tinted with the promise of rain. But not today. Today, light from an alien sun (truly alien, Laykis thought) filtered down through the city in the Ark. 

After only a handful of years, the atmosphere on Maker’s Haven had already reached its optimal mixture. Thus, the xenos had turned off the shield, and the sun shone directly on Laykis’s metal body. Yet, it did nothing to warm her spirits.

She paced back and forth beneath the boughs of a young Kapok tree. Her legs creaked and squeaked with every step, and her feet scraped over the marks in the concrete, grooved from years of anxious pacing. Since the Ark had landed on Maker’s Haven, Laykis had hardly left. Instead, she had spent almost every free moment in this park—working on this new design. The first of its kind, in this universe.

Today, she would find out if her dream was more than a dream. 

Talons clicked along the concrete path. Laykis turned to look. Too fast. Something grinded in her hips, and she lost her balance, barely catching herself on the Kapok tree. 

Eolh rushed forward to help steady her. “You alright?”

“You’re late,” Laykis’s voice clicked with more sharply than she intended. Inside her chassis, her core hummed with anxiety.

“Sorry,” Eolh cawed. “Vaolh was leading the other fledglings in a coup, and my dear wife, the Queen of Aviankind, wasn’t strong enough to hold them back on her own. Vaolh might have my feathers, but he’s got all his mother’s talent for command. Little shit kept screaming about the oppression of nap time. Then, he started leading a protest chant.” Eolh leaned in and whispered conspiratorially. “Don’t tell Ryke, but I heard him practicing a revolution speech in the bath this morning. The fledge is five years old, Laykis. Five!” 

“Her Majesty has run a nation of millions. I’m sure she’s more than enough to handle one fledgling avian.” 

Eolh croaked a laugh, “Maybe him alone. But she’s got three others to worry about now.”

“Would you like to reschedule?” Laykis asked. “Perhaps we should reschedule.”

“Unh uh,” he shook his head. “I know how important this is. This is the one.”

A pyramid’s peak rose just above the canopy of young trees. Its base dominated the center of the park, and thousands of wires grew like black vines down its sides, and buried into the deck below the park. The pyramid was a crude imitation of Sen’s Mirror. Laughably primitive, Laykis thought, nothing compared to what the Makers could build. But, after years of studying Sen’s designs, and working on prototypes and running tests, this was the culmination of her efforts. Please let this be more than a dream.

Five and a half years ago, when the Ark had landed on Maker’s Haven, they held a grand funeral for Yarsi. Her body was laid to rest in the altar of the largest Temple on the Ark—a fitting resting place for a mortal-turned-god. 

But the memory device was not buried with her. It was kept in a shrine, and though it was safeguarded day and night by a retinue of priests and honor guards, the shrine was open to all worshippers. With permission, and a great deal of reverence, Laykis had touched the device—and found that it still worked.  All of Yarsi’s memories, and all of Emorynn’s, were hers to access. 

In those memories, Laykis found the plans dreamed up by Emorynn—and witnessed in the real by Yarsi. With their combined memories, Laykis hoped she might have a chance to recreate the Mirror.

The xenos were not so hopeful. Only a god, they believed, could recreate the works of the Makers. On top of that, Laykis was deteriorating. Her core was cracked, and a microscopic flow of Light leaked out of her, eroding both Tython’s original designs and the layers of improvements Laykis had made to herself. Of late, Laykis had even begun to doubt herself. 

But Eolh—Eolh believed. In her, his faith never wavered.

“It’s going to work,” Eolh said. 

“You don’t know that,” Laykis clicked sourly.

“What about Yarsi’s memory-thing? Nobody but you could even read it.” 

“Yet I still don’t understand half of what I downloaded. Emorynn’s memories are too vast. And though the Mirror was her concept, it was Sen who built it.”

“Exactly,” Eolh crowed, “Sen built it. If it was done once, reckon it can be done again.” 

Her Core was practically vibrating. If Laykis had a mouth, she might be clenching all her teeth. She hadn’t felt this tense since … well, since the day she first found the human child, still alive in his cryochamber. 

“Listen to me, Laykis. You keep working on it, then it’s going to work. I was there, too, when he went through. I remember the Mirror—and this one feels just like it. You’re so damn close. Handle the wires and I’ll get the switch, and we’ll test this one together.” 

Laykis nodded. She stooped low, and grabbed the thickest wire of the bunch. A twinge ran out from her Core and down her wrists, and suddenly her fingers refused to grip. She tried again, but her hands kept sliding off. Eolh had to come over and help her, and in the end, she stood at the switch while he wrestled the wires into place. Even my hands refuse to work. And her Core was humming again. Why did I think I could follow in the Makers’ footsteps? 

But Eolh put a feathered hand on her shoulder, and squeezed. “Come on, android,” he crowed. “We’re ready.”

Her hand hovered over the switch. She stopped. “What if it doesn’t work?” 

Eolh didn’t grumble or growl or sigh. Instead, her avian friend looked her in the eye and said, “This was your idea, android. So, of course it’s going to work.”

And just like that, her Core whispered, smooth and quiet. All the tension melted away. They pulled the switch together. 

Milliseconds ticked by, and her excitement ramped. Two excruciating seconds later, Laykis couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Do you see anything?” she asked.

“Give it time.” 

She could feel the hum of energy coursing through the wires. She could feel the drain on the Ark’s reserves as all that power surged into the Mirror. And still nothing.

“Eolh?”

Peering in, Eolh pressed his beak against the Mirror’s glass-like exterior, shielding his vision with both wings. 

“No,” he said.

“We can’t drain the Ark forever.”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “Maybe …” 

Laykis was about to pull the switch off, when he crowed a sharp “Wait!” 

Something moved.

A flicker.

A flare of iridescence.

A single thread of Light, as thin as spider’s silk, drew itself down the center of the pyramid. Then, it peeled open, a sliver that revealed billions of glittering specks, dancing around each other. Laykis stared rapt, though her sensors could find no pattern in the dance. Lines and curves danced and bounced and erupted out of each other. Alien shapes speared out of the darkness, swallowing each other and splitting into new concepts, before splitting again. New depths of new infinities revealed themselves in an endless, never-repeating—

The Light seized. All stood still. 

“Uh oh,” Eolh said. “I think we overloaded it.”

Laykis’s voice clicked as she whispered, “No.” 

The pattern wavered, but did not change. Slowly, so slowly, her visual sensors began to adjust. There was a curve, like the corner of a lip. And there, two orbs that might’ve been a pair of eyes. And …

From the rising glass surface of the Pyramid, a face smiled down at her. She had dreamed of that face since the day her Maker brought her to life, so many thousands of years ago. 

An ancient voice spoke her name. “Laykis?” 

“I am here! I am here, Divine One.” Her Core was humming now, soaring with divine ecstasy. Oh, how she had waited to hear his voice.

“Of course, you are. It was always going to be you.” 

Eolh was beaming. He nudged Laykis in her metal ribs, as if to say, see? didn’t I say that?

“Ten thousand eons I have waited, and ten thousand more. And yet, I always held onto my hope you would somehow find me. It has been so very long since I have heard your voice.”

“Have you not been watching over us, Divine One?” Laykis asked.

“I have seen nothing since I pulled the Ark through the Scar,” the Savior Divine said. “How long has it been?”

“Five and a half years,” Laykis said.

“So short a time?” the Savior Divine shook his head, causing his great image to warp and glitter. “I could have sworn … but tell me. What of our xenos? What of Eolh and all the others?”

“I’m here, too, fledge.”

“Fledge,” Poire chuckled, his voice rich and deep and full of barely-bridled joy. “Oh, nothing can compare to the sound of my two oldest friends. Tell me, tell me everything.”

Pride pulsed in Laykis’s Core. To Eolh, she asked, “Where shall we begin?”

“The children?” Eolh croaked.

“The children. Divine One, we have wanted to ask, as you are the only one who might know. How shall we raise the children?”

“What children?” The Savior divine asked. 

Laykis and Eolh looked at each other for a long moment, both too stunned to say anything.

He doesn’t know?” Eolh asked.

“I don’t think he knows.”

“He doesn’t know … ”

“Know what?” the Savior Divine asked.

“But he should’ve seen Khadam bring back the canister—”

Laykis shook her head, “Human-made metal. Designed to absorb the Light. He couldn’t see.”

“What are you two talking about?” the Savior’s voice boomed with impatient curiosity. He almost sounded like the young Poire they had both met in the Cauldron, so long ago.

Eolh and Laykis looked at each other once more. And the two of them shared a laugh that made Laykis’s Core sing with joy. They told him about the human embryos that Khadam had brought to the Ark. Safe and secure and, blessedly, free of the Prophet’s Disease. 

“We figure,” Eolh said, “We can bring them out in cohorts. That way, we can get a handle on dealing with them. Because, you know, nobody’s ever raised a human child before.”

The Savior said, “And what about the years you spent raising me?” 

“Oh,” Laykis clicked.

“Huh,” Eolh crowed.

And Poire burst into laughter. The sound was so sweet, Laykis wanted to listen to it for the rest of her life.

THE END.