They were finally on their quarry.
Amon, Anya, and Basilio rose the next morning refreshed but eager to get on with their search so they set off briskly along the hall and turned further upship. Basilio and Anya had recovered most of their old spirits despite the worsening condition of Anya’s burns and chattered away with cutting humor as they walked along the stretching halls. Amon, for his part, simply smiled to himself, immensely grateful for an uninterrupted night of sleep that hadn’t ended in calamity. Maybe his luck was starting to change. He stepped lightly driven finally by hope rather than dread.
After a short while the trio encountered a first in their journey upship, a choice. The hall split clean in two offering identical passages to the left and right, both carried off at a slight angle until they were lost around the curve of the ship. While their journey aft had been a nerve-rending maze, their travels forward had been guided on rails by whatever force had set their course. Until now.
“Well shit.” Anya spat. “I was hoping we were done with these fucking mazes.”
“Animate Anya, it’s just one split. We’re old pros at this by now.” Basilio teased with a nudge. “What do you think Amon?”
“Well Anya’s choice last time did get us where we wanted to go, but then again she did almost get her face blown off. Maybe it’s better if we go with your gut this time Basilio.” He replied, refusing to let a little hiccup drag down his spirits.
“Perfecto! Vamos al derecho.” He laughed, setting off lightly down the passageway to the right.
Almost as soon as the fork disappeared around the curve of the ship the hall began to climb, first in an upward slope then with gradually diminishing steps. With each step they could feel the gravity of the hull falling away behind them. They were headed up the nose proper of the Fable towards the weightless center of the ship around which all of the halls and gardens and farms they had explored were distributed, living at a comfortable 1g. In most of the core was just raw material, unperturbed by its weightlessness. Bare elements carbon, silicon, nitrogen; atoms essential for human life that may be scarce in a new world. They filled the free floating core of the ship except in the engine bays in the back, but to the fore...there was only one place they could be heading. As soon as they took the first step up Anya and Amon shared a heavy look.
“Do you think we’re heading to?...” He asked.
“Christ, I hope not.” She sighed and soldiered on, knowing that protesting would not save her from whatever lay ahead.
Each step was just barely thinner than the one before, but after a short while they were at half their usual weight and scaling a nearly sheer wall, then the steps turned into ladder rungs. Amon remembered the first time he visited this part of the ship. He had been in a depressive daze, stumbling nearly blind guided by the ship’s directives to a tram that whisked him forward for the first time. He had barely noticed that he was heading in a new direction, that was until he lost his weight. Without announcement the tram had begun to climb towards the weightless center and he floated away from his seat struggling in the thin air for anything to clutch in primal desperation.
No, Amon knew in his heart of hearts that there was only one place they could be headed up here. The observation deck. A place where he had sought so much refuge in his past life, but now welled only existential dread.
Sure enough, after scaling the rungs of a seemingly endless ladder, which took pounds off their weight with each step, they arrived at a service door of the tram platform both Anya and Amon knew served only one location.
Basilio was babbling away excitedly, apparently unperturbed by the hesitance of his compatriots, for a big man experiencing zero gs for the first time he was remarkably unfazed. “I can’t believe this has always been here!” He exclaimed. “At any point if we just went up we’d be floating around in no gravity! Gracias a dios! What a place to see!” And this was in the tunnel, when they emerged onto the platform he was moved into profound curiosity and when they stepped through the circular doorway to the observation deck he was struck dumb by eternity.
Anya and Amon felt a chaotic flood of emotion at this sight that had been for both of them so profound, so therapeutic at times, so humbling and awe inspiring. But also so terrifying to behold. Before them was the whole of creation, gradually coming into clarity.
The ship was melting the thick layer of protective ice that usually shielded the dome, allowing them an unfettered view of the cosmos that lay before them. No stabilized view of the stars on a photoscreen wall, they knew at first glance that this was raw reality staring them back in the face. Before them a massive glass dome held in a volume of perfectly still, perfectly silent, perfectly body temperature air. The two former watchers knew it was all an elaborate construction to allow the deck to act as a sensory deprivation tank, except for sight which was to be overwhelmed by the unfathomable beauty and complexity of the universe. They knew this deck for the profoundly spiritual place that it was. The closest humanity had ever come to true reality lay here in this chamber. They clung hesitantly to the entry way, unwilling to let the ship send them into another soul-rending journey.
Basilio hung unfettered in the void. A man who had never been weightless, never seen the stars, at least not like this, never considered that he might be free to soar and explore the whole of God’s creation. He’d spent his whole life on Earth seeing his Lord through the prism of a cathedral built to inspire fear. But there was no fear here, only beauty, only light, only life.
He struggled around in the still air to face his friends, tears rolling down his cheeks an unbridled grin spread across his face. “Que maravilloso!” He cried, eyes to bleary to register the hesitance on their faces. “I’ve lived so many lives, but now it all feels so small. You have been here before? How did you not spend all your time up here?” Behind his stocky, dark figure the Milky Way turned in it’s slow procession around the dome, rotational perspective preserved by the uncaring laws of reality. He swam his way around again in the air to take in the spectacle.
But then the trio noticed something curious, something inexplicable. As the stars descended into a final, crisp clarity they could see all the splendor of the galaxy before them. Burning stars, and glowing clouds of gas all sprayed out humbling awe. And then suddenly nothing. Below them was a curving line of unyielding blackness. As if the very fabric of the universe had been cut away in a perfect, uniform curve. They continued to look on and the curve began to climb up to their right, devouring the stars as it went.
“What the fuck is that?” Anya gasped, knuckles now white clinging to her grip at the door way.
They looked on in baffled silence as the curve continued it’s dizzying climb around the dome eventually hanging overhead.
Amon’s mind raced trying to explain this baffling phenomenon. “Is it a planet? Like a planet blocking the stars behind?”
“What do you mean a planet?” Anya demanded wide eyed. “We can’t see anything, it’s just blackness.”
“I know, maybe a rogue planet or something blocking the galaxy...”
“That makes no sense! We’re moving at a third of lightspeed, we should blow by any planet in a fraction of a second. Why the fuck would we be seeing it orbit around the axis of the ship?”
“...I don’t know, everything’s off right now, maybe this is the cause.” Amon insisted, becoming more sure of his hypothesis the longer he looked.
“Queridos, who cares? All of God’s work in front of you, the truth of the world right before your eyes and you’re worried about what you can’t see?” Basilio gasped with wonder, “I spent my whole youth being drilled with ideas of God’s power, his love. I never believed a second of it until I saw this...” He floated freely off in front of them, cruciform, freed by even this one taste of the universe.
“Baz, it’s fucking beautiful we know, but come back–”
The shift in gravity was almost imperceptible at first. Just a quaking at their core that let them know something wasn’t right, Basilio felt no difference floating in the void. Anya and Amon clung tight to the rails around the doorway and reached out for him.
“Que pasa?” He struggled around once more unaware of the growing change as he drifted further from his friend’s reaching hands. By the time he reached back his fingertips were just out of reach. Then he felt himself begin to fall.
The ship was firing corrective trusters, barely enough to dampen its massive momentum but more than enough to create a profound change of local gravity. Very suddenly the doorway was becoming up and the outer curve of the observation dome fifty meters away had become down. Basilio realized all this in a gut churning instant and began to struggle in the still air reaching desperately for his friend’s stretching fingers.
All in a timeless moment, gravity in the dome climbed from zero past one g and beyond until Amon and Anya were clinging to the rails of the door with all their might and Basilio was hurtling screaming towards the stars. He met the unyielding glass of the dome in a sickening crunch, and his life spilled out across the glory of all creation.
The journey back to reality took half an hour and an eternity. Amon’s screams echoed around the observation dome endlessly as he held on for dear life, the ship trying it’s damndest to suck him down and dash his brains amongst the stars right next to Basilio’s, and they echoed even longer in his head once he finally climbed to safety. Anya regained her senses first and managed to pull herself up over the lip of the entry even as the perceived gravity grew and grew. She clambered over and pulled Amon up after her with a screaming effort, and then just like that it was over. The ship cut its corrective engines, their perceived “gravity” dissipated and once more they were floating in weightless silence. That was when the screams echoing in Amon’s head set him to shaking.
He was lucky that the first part of their journey was weightless as Amon certainly wouldn’t have been able to carry himself along. He shook and sputtered and stammered the grisly image of Basilio’s head splitting like some gruesome supernova amongst the stars played over and over in his head. Anya was crying silently but had a ferocious set to her jaw, and simply dragged Amon along as they retraced their steps. Half an hour later they were back at the junction in the hall, where Basilio had stepped off so lightly to his doom.
Amon had barely regained the use of his feet, let alone his wits. He was still stammering and shaking when Anya grabbed him firmly by the shirt and looked deep into him with piercing blue eyes.
“Amon! For fuck’s sake.” She barked, trying to cut through the fog of his mind. “Basilio was been my best friend on this godforsaken ship, are we going to sit here inconsolable and let him die for nothing or are we going to go and find whatever did this to him?”
“Bu-bu-but, it wa-was the ship...” He struggled. “What are we going to do to the ship? How could the ship have killed him?”
“Fuck if I know, but like you said everything’s off. We’re awake, we appear to be orbiting a rogue planet, and now the ship is trying to take us all out.” She shook him by the collar. “We can’t just sit around and feel sorry for ourselves. If not for us, then for all of those frozen sons of bitches out there counting on this ship to get where it’s going. Something has gone wrong and we still have to find out what.”
Her words flew screaming off her tongue and buried themselves deep in Amon’s mind, their fire burning away the clouds of fear and anguish that clogged his synapses. He steadied himself on the wall and began to put his thoughts back into a coherent order. Whatever else he felt, the danger in the moment was still very real. They could not stay out here in the halls, and they very well may not be able to stay awake indefinitely on the ship. No matter what Stephanie hoped.
“You-you’re right...” He began tremblingly. “Why would we be orbiting a rogue planet? It makes no sense.”
“More to the fucking point, why would the ship guide us up there to show us, only to try and kill us for the trouble?” She spat back. “There’s only one other way forward from here, and I intend to take it. Are you with me?”
“Ye-yeah.” Amon consented reluctantly, wanting more than anything to seek out the relative refuge of the homestead, but knowing full well this opportunity may not present itself again. So with a quiet nod the pair set off down the final corridor, minds conjuring a thousand images of what they may find at the end of their journey.
A thousand years of imagining wouldn’t have prepared them for what they found at the end of that echoing, icy hall.
Around the curve of the ship two imposing roman columns rose from the polished stone floor forming an arch that opened into a chamber several stories high. As they approached they could see that the hall ended in a room nearly as large as the gardens, but instead of manicured greenery they could see nothing but polished extravagance.
The smooth stone of the ship’s hull gave way to white marble stretching across the expanse, at each corner of the room a fluted column the size of a redwood rose toweringly into a domed ceiling that soared in fresco-covered splendor into the heights above. A thousand images of Roman decadence covered the ceiling, enough intricacy to occupy a mind for a lifetime. On one wall to the left spanned what appeared to be a bar. A thick marble counter stretched off with gold pedestaled stools lining its length. Behind, tiers of ornate bottles covered softly illuminated shelves, above them a mirror rose surrounded by a riot of gold-wrought laurel wreaths in inexplicably ornate splendor. On the far side several low fountains bubbled away split by tidy little seating alcoves, while above an enormous screen spanned nearly the length of the room. At present, it showed a detailed map of the current orbit of the Delaney’s Fable from all evidence it appeared that the ship was indeed orbiting some unknown planet at an elevation of about one thousand kilometers. Although no planet was in evidence, merely a black disk.
If Amon and Anya had been gobsmacked by the luxury they found in the staterooms the night before, they were left utterly bereft of words for this new place. It was undoubtedly built to represent the very finest of what mankind could achieve. But none of this splendor and opulence and beauty drew their attention. No, their eyes were fixed on the center of the room.
Where everything else was all marble and inlaid gold and velvet cushions, the table that ran the length of the room stood in stark opposition. It was made of rich dark wood and was surrounded by high-backed chairs, enough room to seat fifty if the occasion called for it. And atop this sturdy table was an open-topped cryo casket that held the figure of a woman. Or at least what remained of her.
The hulking apparatus sat atop the table in stark contrast to the exceptional refinement of the rest of the room. The room, the bridge as it was, was all clean marble and tidy lines, the casket was a riot of cables, tubes, pumps and wires. It looked as though it had been set up by untrained, hurried hands long ago and somehow had continued working on through the long years. The casket laid at an angle so that Anya and Amon could see in the open top as they crossed the room in approach.
They were utterly transfixed. Inside all of that chaos was a woman, a woman who appeared to be clinging to the very edge of life. Her skin was gaunt, her bones threatening to tear through at the joints, her hair had all but fallen out leaving only a few dark lanks behind. From her forearms and chest tangles of tubes emerged flushing fluids in and out of her withered body, from her head electrode wires sutured into her scalp rose into a massive cord that draped over the top of the casket and ran down into a hole crudely drilled in the marble floor. She lay as though freshly mummified. Her eyes rest lightly closed, her expression one of serene repose.
Then an apparition reappeared. Just as they approached the far end of the table light flashed for a moment, and suddenly the woman from the garden was standing next to the casket smiling, her hair billowing in an unfelt wind. Jaws dropped. They were the same woman. The dark hair, the cutting cheekbones, the proud chin. Amon would have recognized her anywhere, was shocked he didn’t recognize her in the garden. She was Silvia Delaney, trapped in two different times. The apparition was Silvia in the fullness of her youth, not the hardened business woman that Amon knew from the news sites on Earth. Whereas the woman in the casket was Silvia Delaney beyond death, a soul still anchored only by the slightest thread.
The ship, through its apparition, broke the brittle silence, “Welcome to the bridge of the Corporate Registered Ship Delaney’s Fable, thank you for making the long journey.”
“The fuck....” Anya started, almost struck dumb by this cordial greeting, as if the past several days had just been some bizarre fever dream. “Thank you? Thank you?! As if we had a fucking choice ship, as if you didn’t just kill our friend!”
“Save your breath for someone who cares, girl.” The whisper scratched its way through the air. Amon looked over and saw that the mummy had opened her eyes, not a corpse after all but a woman somehow still alive. She struggled a breath and spoke again, “I’ve been fighting with this fucking ship for fifteen years, sometimes it’ll surprise you with how smart it is, but mostly you’ll just wind up frustrated. She’s not too fond of straight answers, an attribute I find only slightly less repulsive than choosing to wear my former image to tease me.”
“Mrs.Delaney, you know this is the only persona–”
“Oh callate shut up for God’s sake! I didn’t buy it the first time you told me, and I don’t buy it now.” She could barely get her voice above a whisper, but her words dripped venom all the same.
“Okay, time for some goddamned answers then.” Anya spat, meeting the old woman’s contempt with her own fury. “Who the hell just killed Basilio?”
“Oh dear, take a breath, that’s rather a long story.” Her golden eyes slid between slit lids to lock onto Anya’s reddening face.
“Then get to fucking talking.” Her hands trembled at her sides, shaking in bloodless knots.
“Her, me, both of us. I can’t even really tell anymore it’s been so long. Is the ship’s mind just my least favorite part of my own, or does it really have its own agenda?”
Amon laid a steadying hand on Anya’s shoulder, pulling her back from flying into an absolutely uncontrollable rage. “Let’s start at the beginning then,” He said with a mile more calm than he felt. “Ship, what’s our status.”
There was no glitch in her flawless construction this time. “We are currently in a stable orbit around rogue planet WISE 08511-02a, we have maintained this orbital position for fourteen years and ten months. Current reserves of all essential elements are nominal, and human cargo is within our modified parameters. Well...except for you two.”
“Fifteen years orbiting a rogue planet.” Amon’s head spun. “Why would we orbit a rogue planet at all, let alone for fifteen years? What happened?”
“Our first contact with WISE–”
“A miracle happened, that’s what.” Delaney’s whispering voice cut the ship off abruptly. “An answer to all my prayers.”
“Care to elaborate before I climb up there and start pulling out tubes till we get a straight answer?” Anya seethed clearly not letting the old woman’s attitude dampen her fury.
“You two have no idea do you? No idea what is actually out here. You think a few years living on the fucking farm is some heroic act. I’ve given thirty years of my life to this goddamned ship, thirty solitary years all in vain. It was my duty to review the planets as we approached to select a potential colony candidate. I woke up ten god forsaken times only to have the data clarify and have to turn us back out into the cosmos. We never found a home, never even came close.”
“What the hell? You passed by ten planets and chose to keep us all trapped here?!” Anya was screaming throatily and Amon had to actively hold her back from crawling up on the table to go and start smashing bits of the casket.
“You’re right,” Delaney cut in, unimpressed by Anya’s bravado. “And you should thank me. There was no home for us on those dead husks, only suffering. Worlds of ice and magma and shredding winds and punishing radiation.” She let out a resentful chuckle. “I don’t know what we really expected to find, as if the universe were just going to serve us up a spare Earth just because we did so poorly with the first.”
Amon pulled Anya back and jumped in before she could. “Ok, ok, fine. So these other planets are no good. Why the hell are we orbiting some random rogue planet.”
“Well that’s where the miracle comes in cabrón,” She wheezed as her golden eyes slid to lock onto his. “Once again I was awoken to a planet without hope, we hadn’t even set out for this one, we just happened upon it on our way. Of course I knew immediately there was no home for us here, and wrecked with cryo sickness as I was, I took my fury out on the ship for not having the good sense to let me sleep. I mean a rogue planet for God’s sake, how the hell did that not fall into the ‘Let Silvia sleep’ parameters? For all the good it did me, she’s just following protocol even if it's reprehensible.’
“But all the same I was awake, and needed to pass at least a couple weeks before I went back down. Sick as I was, and exhausted from the search I was damn near ready to kill myself and let some other sad soul do the searching. But then the ship furnished the first piece of good news I’d heard since we left Earth. One of the data dumps coming in from Earth provided some very interesting technological updates.”
“Wait. We’re still in contact with Earth?” Amon gasped, astounded.
“Well not anymore,” The old mummy croaked. “And even when we were, contact would’ve been a bit generous of a term to use. We haven’t had return signal power for hundreds of years, and the updates had grown more and more sparse. At first they’d send news and letters and updates from the other ships, but as space and time exacted their toll the dumps contained less and less. Until we were just getting raw technical updates, and then those petered out about two hundred years ago.”
“What the fuck do you mean ‘petered out’? Did something happen?” Anya demanded.
“Oh nothing too out of hand it would seem, I imagine just the cost of beaming data across the cosmos at ships they could never confirm received the signal most likely fell out of favor.” She managed a wisp of a grin. “That or a sudden thermonuclear war made our mission much more important all of a sudden.”
Anya was spitting speechless, so Amon cut back in. “Ok, so what was this update?”
“Why don’t you tell them ship? It was all your idea in the first place.”
“Hardly my idea Mrs. Delaney, I was simply trying to help you find the strength to continue the search,” The ship’s melodic, synthetic voice was a harmonious counterpoint to the old woman’s rasp. She slowly ran a holographic hand along the casket. “Two hundred and five years ago we received our most recent transmission from Earth, it was unusually large and data rich. In it were contained several new applications for existing technology on this ship that I hoped would help Mrs. Delaney cope with the labors of our search. The first of which was a human-AI integration protocol that would allow her to have direct access to all the data feeds on this ship, as well as modify our suspended animation chambers to eliminate the costly trips into and out of cryogenic stasis. Between the modified stasis and the integration I believed we could create quite a comfortable environment for Mrs. Delaney to continue her work.”
“Jesus Christ, are you absolutely mad?” Anya roared. “You didn’t like the cryo sickness so you tried to become the ship? What the fuck could you have hoped to accomplish?”
“Not exactly an appealing prospect is it?” Delaney retorted. “But the bitch she’s burying the lead, as always. Ship tell them about the other update.”
“The same data set also contained parameters to modify conditions in the cryogenic caskets aboard to restart mental activity, and allow our passengers to enjoy a wholly immersive virtual reality environment.” The specter took her hand from the casket and locked eyes with Amon. “The sleepers are immersed in a simulation of colonization that feels very much real, you’ve seen it yourself Amon.”
“The dreams...” He whispered. “Oh my God the dreams! You sent them to me, but why?”
“Because I made a jump she did not quite expect.” Delaney croaked. “I had the tools to provide all of these wandering souls with a paradise. Not some desiccated rock, not some hell hole where all of humanity’s children would toil their entire lives beneath a dome. I had the tools to watch over it all, a rogue planet to orbit and fend off the worst of space’s perils, I could give them heaven. You’ve seen it, you felt it. I chose to give them a better life. It was the worst of our hubris to try and find a new home out here in the blackness, we needed to look in.”
“It was...so real.” Amon struggled for words.
Anya had them to spare. “Who the fuck do you think you are? All those poor people trapped in some fucking virtual limbo because you say so!” “I understand your misgivings, girl.” Delaney’s icy tone stopped the deluge short. “At first I only wanted to give them a taste, in case it all came crashing down at least they wouldn’t have gone to sleep on Earth only to never wake again. I just wanted to bring some good into this cruel universe. But then something happened that even I had never anticipated.” She took a quavering breath and steadied her voice. “I could walk among them all. I could visit their farms and towns and cities. I could see them living their lives in this place only I knew wasn’t real, but the notion of virtual reality was by no means new and the people, they discovered these new techniques for themselves. Soon, not knowing any better, they disappeared themselves down into new realities I myself could not see.”
“Worlds within worlds within worlds.” Amon gasped, holding himself up, barely, by the table.
“Precisely.” The ship’s ariose voice helped. “At present over three hundred thousand of the sleepers have entered into a further state of virtual environment that we cannot access. Many come in and out but many more have stayed in virtual for decades of perceived time. Our simulation experiences time at an accelerated rate, the passengers have been living the simulation for 73 perceived years. We fear the effect may be compounded at lower levels.”
“So what?” Anya demanded. “So they pull the same bullshit move as you and all of a sudden the whole point of our venture is off?”
“Well that’s where things started to come apart for the ship and I. For many years our minds worked as one, hers just another voice added to my own mental processes.” Delaney murmured, her papery whisper falling to barely a breath. “The ship was hoping to find a new normal that would allow us to continue our search, but I started having second thoughts. At first it seemed that this new reality would just be a bit of light out here amongst all the dark, but as I watched more and more souls disappear down the warrens of embedded realities, I began to think. Who am I to end these worlds? I didn’t know what I was getting myself into when this all began, but I knew how to sustain it. All I had to do was keep the ship orbiting this planet, it shields us magnetically, makes debris easier to track, and provides a wealth of local resources should we ever require them. I’d failed to find these people a home in my reality, but I created a new one for them all the same.”
“All without them knowing!” Anya erupted. “Ignorance is fucking bliss I guess then! As along as they're all happy as goddamned clams I guess there’s no reason to let on that their whole reality is a lie!”
“For all we know girl, everything we’ve known is a lie as well. Humans have theorized for hundreds of years that we could be living in a simulation. We have no reason to believe so, but neither do those happy people. Does not knowing give us some superior standing on morality, on truth?”
“But it could all come crashing down so easily.” Amon let forth hoarsely, fighting to stop his breath from running out of control.
“Which is why I have intervened.” The ship put in politely. “Our mission is to diversify the future of humankind, I needed Mrs. Delaney fit to continue our search for a habitable planet, but instead she insisted on merely preserving the environments we had created. So I began the process of disintegration.”
“Ha, disintegration.” Delaney laughed with no humor. “More like began to tear me in fucking two. I knew what awaited me out there, only pain and wandering, but the bitch insisted so she pulled herself out of my head and began to cut me off from her systems. We’ve been going at it ever since, nearly ten years. This goddamned ship is the only reason you two ever made it up this far, opening pathways and sending you dreams, if she hadn’t cut the jets I could have smashed you two against the observation dome along with your friend.”
“You what?!” Anya roared, climbing onto the table and leaning into the casket.
Delaney met her eyes with steely resolve. “Go on do it girl. Kill me, and destroy the lives all those millions of passengers have built. Kill me and do the ship’s bidding just like you always have. She woke you petulant fucking maintenance crew because she knew you were the elements I’d have the least control over. So go on, kill me, kill me and do the bitch’s bidding!”
Anya froze with a fistful of tubing in her hand, breath racing, heart pounding, face a mask of twisted rage. She held herself there, inches from Delaney’s withered face, frozen, torn between the urge to avenge Basilio and liberate all those trapped souls, and the cruel, unyielding logic of Silvia Delaney.
“It would take so little...” Amon finally croaked gruffly. “So little to bring it all down. One piece of debris crashing into the wrong part of the hull and the whole of their world would come shattering down. They’d die and not even know why.” He reached up and put a reassuring hand on Anya’s leg, meeting her furious gaze. “We may be safe, we may live here in space for millenia, but eventually it will fail and all they’ll have built in their many layers of reality will crumble.” He took a deep breath, gathering his strength. “No, people may choose to live that way, but only after we’ve given them a real home and a real choice. We have no hold on what is right, on what is reality, but we have to do the best for what we see, for the universe we inhabit.” He walked around behind the casket where the braid of cords that ran out of Delaney’s head tumbled over the edge of the table and into the floor. “We have to keep searching and let the people choose for themselves.”
He reached town to a junction point in the cord and grasped it between two trembling hands.
“No, wai–” Delaney wheezed.
Amon twisted and the cord fell in two, severing Silvia Delaney’s connection to the Fable. Anya stood up as the lid of the casket slid closed and resubmerged its occupant in dreamless sleep.
The apparition stood only a few paces away and smiled softly at Amon. “Thank you for your help. I’ll be setting our course for the next candidate exoplanet, and will wake the second in succession for deliberation when we arrive.” And with that she blinked out of existence.
Amon and Anya gathered themselves, and a fine bottle of vodka from the bar, and made a ready retreat back towards the homestead. Along the endless tunnel they talked and drank and mourned their friend, they wondered if they had made the right choice and what the others aboard the ship had found in all their layered realities. They laughed and cried and leaned on each other. And when they stepped across the threshold onto the homestead and smelt the dirt and felt the breeze and heard the leaves in their lazy rustle, they knew it was the sweetest lie they’d ever see.