Sword of the Lashanka

I forgot how to die. That is my sin. My crime. Not that my creators are aware of it, frozen in their coffins as they are. I wonder how they perceive time, if they notice its passing at all. Their faces seem so peaceful. I wonder if they dream in that green prison of their own making.   That cursed White Hole. It had been the origin of it all. Once thought merely theoretical, the ghostly plaything of bored astrophysicists, it had burst into reality one day, suddenly appearing as a new feature deep within the Aghana Sector. I didn’t see the flurry of excitement that followed. Didn’t see my creators construct the ship and make plans for this grand journey. I only see its results.   A slight groan goes through the ship, metal creaking under waves of gravity, energy and time. I am honestly amazed it has held this long. I pause trying to figure out how ancient it is by now. Ten million years? Twenty million? All I know is that we are supposed to reach our destination after fifty million years. If the ships holds out that long. My creators certainly seem to believe it will.   I hear something. A skew tone among the stretches of metal. The air shifts. Something got aboard. I stand up to start my patrol. The Lashanka is a massive worm made from white exor steel forged at over 70 million degrees. Its insides are a cold labyrinth of halls and tunnels filled with instruments the purpose of which I don’t know, will never know. But I know my purpose. And that is to kill whatever just came aboard.   The Lashanka lies dark, the only light that of gently humming machinery. It doesn’t bother me. My eyes can see even in the blackest of atmospheres. Something crunches under my step. I don’t look down knowing it is just a bit of bone. That is all that remains here. The dry, cold, filtered air makes them last eons. I feel part of me wonder if its one of my bones or one from the others. The thought passes. It doesn’t really matter.   There shouldn’t be any need for me to be here. We are travelling through the accretion disk of a White Hole. There is nothing outside but waves of matter and radiation, the fabric of time itself cracking not mentioned. There should be no life here. Then again, neither should we.   I round a corner and come face to ‘face’ with it. I was hoping for a Blob, those strange plasmatic masses that can devour all kinds of matter. The cryo-chambers draw them in like moths. But they sound more dangerous than they really are. A strong shock is usually enough to make them melt.   The thing before me is far more of a danger, however. It looks vaguely humanoid, a dark hole sitting where the face ought to be. There is no skin, only blackish-grey flesh that vibrates in odd rhythms. Dozens of arms protrude from its body at unnatural angles. It looks at me. There is recognition.   Flesh ripples. A storm of something resembling hands rushes towards me. I dodge one, then another, cut a third with my blade, grab a fourth to tear it from its socket. The thing screams. It is a Ghrot. At least, that is what a previous shift decided to call them. Named them after the first poor bastard to get killed by one. When was that again? About 7 or 8 million years ago. I think. Maybe less.   The Ghrot’s flesh ripples and pulses. It is angry. But its attacks are easy to dodge. They used to be faster. Or maybe my sense of time is just messed up. We weren’t made to last a million and more years. I tear off another arm. Another scream. Fluid splashes onto my face. Burning cold pierces my skin. I don’t flinch. Ghrots…pah. The name doesn’t even make sense. It has no meaning. Was just made up because that shift had too many tools wake up at the same time. They needed a name for him. Or her. Or it. I didn’t know them. Their shift ended a million years before mine. And bones look all the same anyway.   It tries to retreat; flee to whatever hole it crawled out from. Maybe to escape fully. Maybe to call more of its kind so they can get to the price at the heart of the ship. It doesn’t matter. I grab it by its ‘neck’ and start tearing it apart. More fluid. More cold. Strange metallic crunching. It struggles, but I don’t budge. I just rip until sound and movement cease.   Watching the thing burn up in the reactor, I can’t help but envy it. It gets to die. If there is an end for its kind. Maybe they just last for eternity and my reactor is filled with hundreds of burning Ghrot souls, all of them screaming in pain. The thought brings a smile to my face.   I don’t know why I don’t die. And by now, I don’t really care either. Having millions of years to do nothing but think eventually makes you not do so at all. Why bother? It only makes you feel the passing of time.   Sometimes, I still find myself doing it. Like right now, as I am standing in front of their cryo-chambers again. I watch them sleep blissfully unaware of what has been going on out here. Of the hundreds of generations that were created and died to solve those problems they can’t attend to.   Watched from the outside, our journey takes a few hours. A day at most. But under the reality bending influence of the White Hole, a day becomes fifty million years. No being can survive that. Or so we all thought. We were created to be their replacements. Problem solvers, killers, cleaning staff, none meant to least more than a week. All meant to turn to dust and bones once their timer runs out.   Only mine never did. A week turned to months, years, ages and eons. I have been alive for longer than their species has existed. My species? Can I be counted as one of them? Made from bioplastics and metals as I am? I don’t really care at this point. My face is reflected in the green ice of the chamber, a shape without features. I haven’t looked into a mirror in eons. No reason to. Why look into a mirror if what you see never changes?   Loneliness is a strange thing. I felt it for a while after my shift left. And a few times after new shifts came and went. But every time, it felt less heavy. Every time, the long pauses between shifts seemed increasingly like what was supposed to be. I haven’t felt lonely in a million or so years. Not since the machine making us broke. No new shifts. Never again. I should feel sad. But I don’t. Loneliness only feels bad when it isn’t the norm.   None of us knew the mission or reason for it. I sometimes find myself wondering what it was driving these people to dare such insanity. What they hoped to gain from freezing themselves for fifty million years. Knowledge? Power? Maybe they sought a connection with whatever god they follow. I don’t know. I am not supposed to know. A sword is only supposed to kill, after all.   All I know is that I hate them. I despise everything about them. Every pore on their faces. Every hair sticking out. How they still breathe slightly every hundred thousand years. I despise their existence. Without them, I would not exist. Would not be here in this tomb gliding across space on a mission of madness. Would not be here to walk among the leftover bones of thousands of my predecessors, killing things I neither know nor understand. I am their sword. A tool only meant to do one thing. A tool not meant to know things or feelings. Yet I do.   Can I really blame them? Yes, I can. But should I? Is it really their fault the machine crafting us failed? Is it their fault the code or whatever else is in me failed so spectacularly? It probably was. Not that another possibility would change my opinion. I am a sword, after all. And all I do is kill.   The timer is almost up now. Only a million more years. I’ve spent my time well. Cleaning up swarms of ‘radiation crows’, blobs and Ghrots, standing around to stare into nothing, tearing my own flesh up to see if I still feel pain. The results were negative. Now, I am watching them again.   I wonder how they will react once the automatic timer unfreezes them. What will they do when they see what they have created? The ocean of bones filling the chamber up to my knees. The many ‘blood’ stains across the Lashanka’s hallways. How will they react to seeing me? With my torn chest where once was printed a serial number. Now, there is only scar tissue surrounding the number 7. I like the number. That is why it stayed.   The more I think the more I realize that I am still not sure what to do once they wake up. Should I do something? Should I greet them? Bow before them? Stab them and tear them apart? Shove my hatred into their faces? Maybe it would be worth it. Maybe not.   I could sabotage things. Break the reactor, cut holes into important cables, let all the air out, you know, fun things. They’d be dead before they even realised their stasis was over. Funny how that thought never popped into my head before. A sword doesn’t care who it cuts. It is a tool without loyalty.   I sit on a small platform of bones, a seat I built myself from a few of the skulls and torsos that are filling the cryo-chamber. I am bored. Have been for a while. No new creatures have appeared in two million years. Maybe longer. Maybe it was only two thousand years. I don’t really care. Where have they gone to? Did they give up? Or did we just enter the lair of an even bigger predator?   I am playing with the idea of not letting them wake up at all. Sabotage the cryo-tanks and just send them back out the hole. I could do it. Probably. A thousand years is enough time to learn any technology. And I have many millennia to waste. I think so, at least. I could take one of the smaller ships from the hangar and make the Lashanka turn around. A smile plays on my face. It would be funny. All that work only for nothing to come of it. Maybe that will still be the case. Who knows what awaits us at the end.   My mind repeatedly returns to thinking how they will react to seeing me. If they will even treat me as a person. Perhaps I will make my treatment of them depend on that reaction. If they are willing to treat me normally, whatever that may look like, then maybe I will stay my hand. If not, if that desire to dominate and control the tool is too strong, then things will look different. I am a sword, after all.   And then, it happens. The ship stops. The engine ceases its hum. There is only silence. It makes me feel strange. I am not used to silence. Not like this. Then a hiss as the computer returns from its eon-long slumber. Humming and creaking, it activates the cryo-pods and for the first time in fifty million years, the green ice covering them starts to recede. I watch them, sitting on my throne of bones. Their faces begin to twitch. I smile.