A New Scribe Takes Up the Pen • 1111 • A Locked Room • Falling Every Way at Once • Orbiting a Dead World • No More Negotiations

How to begin? First, let me note that these entries are not written by Zaxony Delatree, though the script superficially resembles his own. He taught me the rudiments of his language, after all, beginning with his alphabet, and such is my inherent precision that my “handwriting” is largely indistinguishable from his, though I am inputting the text through a direct field interface with his journal. I am Vastcool Class Crystal Intellect Three Three Three, referred to most frequently in the prior pages of this journal as “Vicki” or occasionally as “Victory-Three.”

I am writing this because Zax will not, or cannot, chronicle the events of the past several (for want of a better word in this multiverse of shifting time-scales) weeks.

I write to you from World 1111. Yes, nearly a hundred worlds since the forest with the coma flowers. Time is hard to calculate in any objective sense, but it has been months of subjective time since then, at least.

This is a peaceful world, or, at least, this part of it is. We are in a cloud-forest, currently sitting on an ancient metal platform that was once part of an immense tree-house, long since fallen into disrepair and disuse. Zax is sitting outside, staring blankly into the mist and haze of the forest, beside a pile of fruit I insisted he gather, though he took only one bite of one piece and declared himself full. When we lost Minna, he was inconsolable. Even that depth of sadness was preferable to this… blankness that has taken him since the Lector finished with us, and left us behind.

My apologies. I am approaching this in an entirely non-linear fashion, with far too much personal commentary as well. I have grown unaccustomed to writing reports in recent centuries. Let me try again, picking up as best I can from where Zax’s last entry ended. (I hope it is not his “last” entry in a definitive sense.)

As Zax wrote, after the Lector’s body vanished from the patch of coma-flowers, we debated how best to proceed. We knew the Lector might well be waiting to ambush us in the next world we visited, and tried to prepare ourselves accordingly. With my advice and assistance, Minna created a liquid suspension of the coma-flowers that would reproduce their soporific effects on anyone who breathed or tasted the fluid. She cultivated some small fruiting bodies on her arms and legs that would burst and spray forth droplets of the serum in response to a sudden shift in air temperature or pressure. She and Zax had filter-plants in their nostrils and mossy barriers over their mouths to prevent them from any unintended inhalation. It struck us as a terribly clever way to surprise and disarm the Lector in case he was crouching nearby, waiting to hit us with rocks or the like. We didn’t expect him to have any resources.

My senses came online, and I immediately perceived that we were not on a planet at all, but in an artificial habitat in the void of space. I spent time on a space station early in my military career, monitoring the increasing levels of void infestation, and so the environment was familiar to me. Zax, too, had clearly been in such places at least once or twice, because he evinced no extraordinary alarm or discomfort.

Minna, however, had clearly never experienced microgravity before. She immediately began to shout and flail her arms and legs, sending the now-spent fruiting bodies flying off on their own trajectories: “Zax! Victory-Three! Help me! I am falling every way at once!” The spray from our pointless attempt at a pre-emptive soporific strike floated around the room a bit at first, but there must have been filtration systems in place, because the droplets began to drift unobtrusively toward the corners and thence into small vents.

In her panic, Minna kicked a wall and consequently sent herself caroming headfirst into another wall, as the chamber where we’d appeared was quite small. Minna managed to turn at the last moment and caught herself on her shoulder, thus avoiding concussion or other damage. She looked a bit green – not for photosynthetic reasons, this time – and I feared she might vomit, making the cramped quarters even more unpleasant, but she swallowed hard and gained a modicum of control over herself.

Zax pushed off from a soot-streaked wall covered in clipped-down tubes and wires, like some sort of technological ivy, and eased himself to a stop beside Minna, wrapping her in his arms. “Shh, it’s OK. I know it’s disorienting, but you’ll get used to it. We’re in space.”

“Space? We are always in space. Space is the name for the thing everything is in.”

“I mean outer space.” Minna’s face was blank, so Zax tried again. “High up in the sky, above the planet.” He paused. “Probably. This is a space station, I think, or some kind of orbital craft.”

“The sky above the sky? Where the Nurturer-Butchers dwell?”

“Yes, in your world,” Zax agreed. “I don’t know what dwells here… but it seems like this is a place made for humans. Do you sense any life?”

“Something not far away, yes, as big as a someone. It could be the Lector. Or it could be a space person. I have never met a space person.”

Zax laughed. I remember, because he has not laughed again in all the long days since. “Minna,” he said. “You’re a space person now.”

She giggled, delighted at the idea, then pushed herself away from the wall, and spun in a lazy weightless pirouette. “I am getting used to it. I am getting my space legs.”

“I knew you’d adapt. I’ve never met anyone more adaptable than you.”

“Adapt or die, Zax,” Minna said. “That is the way of things, in every world I think.”

There were two doors in the room, one with a window that showed starry black space, the other with a window that revealed a corridor. Zax went to the latter, an ellipsoid hatch with a wheel-shaped handle in the center, and tried to open it. “Won’t budge,” he said. “A locked room, but no Lector locked in it. Maybe we finally managed to go to a world where he didn’t. Or he didn’t like being stuck in here, and had enough juice left for one more traveling nap. Vicki, wouldn’t it be nice if we finally–”

I interrupted, troubled. “Zax. I am trying to take control of the station, but it’s on some sort of security lockdown. We won’t have any special privileges here.”

“I’m pretty used to that,” Zax said. “I usually manage to muddle through without any privileges at all. I wonder if there’s anything to eat in here?”

I understand Zax’s focus on taking care of his subsistence-level needs – I’m sure he’s been desperate for water and food many times in the course of his travels, and while I don’t feel hunger in a biological sense, I imagine it is equivalent to the desperation for new data I experienced during my long watch alone in the lighthouse – but sometimes his interest in the immediate clouds his vision to the larger situation. “Zax, listen. This station doesn’t seem particularly advanced, by the standards of my world anyway, and the security protocols I’m encountering are very strange – they seem rather alien to the underlying computational structures, as if they’ve been created by someone operating from entirely different principles.”

“Wait,” Zax said. “Do you mean–”

“It means I got here first, and arranged things to my liking.” The Lector’s voice crackled over a speaker system. “I can’t tell you how happy I was to find myself in a place with technology, Zax. And on very likely my last world before the effects of my serum dissipated. I wished so desperately for such an outcome, and it’s as if the multiverse wants me to succeed. I accept that nature tends toward entropy, but in almost every world we visit, we find complexity and structure instead, don’t we? Perhaps on some level nature longs to be shaped, or why else would it create so much life inclined to do the shaping?”

Zax looked at Minna, and she looked at him, but neither spoke. What could be said?

“No thoughts on the subject? Your lack of philosophical curiosity was always a disappointment to me, Zaxony. Why would you be granted this gift, when you don’t even want to consider the implications and exploit the possibilities? At least the universe brought you to me, and now, it’s given me the tools to make proper use of you. We’re on a science vessel, Zaxony, though some of the science apparently got loose and killed the crew a while ago. You can’t see the planet below us from your side – that part of the station is facing the wrong way – but from here, I have a beautiful viewport, and the world below is a cinder. There are fires burning that are visible from space. The station’s logs are fragmentary, and much of the system is corrupted, but as best I can tell, there was an alien life form, or a bioengineered creation based on alien life, here in the labs, and it got loose. It infected the people on board, or became those people, or something? The crew ran a sanitizing protocol, which explains the soot and ash you’ve doubtless noticed smeared on the walls. That’s what’s left of the crew, and the creatures that tried to do… whatever… to them. They seem to have successfully eradicated all trace of the organism from the station, at the cost of their own lives. There was a shuttle, though, and the logs indicate it departed. Presumably that shuttle made it back to the world below with some alien contaminant on board and… it doesn’t look like things went well after that, does it? It seems someone tried to run a sanitizing protocol on the whole planet.” The Lector tittered.

Partway through the Lector’s speech, Zax reached into his bag, fumbling a bit in microgravity. He was trying to find sedatives, I’m sure, so we could escape this situation. If we went to sleep now, the Lector would be stranded in orbit around a dead planet, which would be a suitable fate for him.

But the Lector was watching – I counted four cameras in this room alone – and said, “Ah, ah, ah, no more sleepy-time, Zax. That big door beside you is an airlock. I already opened the outer door, and with the push of a button, I can open the inner one. The station really hates to open both those doors at once, but as your talking pinky ring mentioned, I’ve seized control and implemented my own protocols. Fortunately, while this world seems fairly advanced in terms of biological sciences, it’s unimpressive from a computer-science perspective. There’s no artificial intelligence on board. Not even expert systems. All I had to do was trick a sensor so it thinks the outer door is closed when it’s not. Easy enough. If you and your potted plant so much as close your eyes, I’ll vent you into space before you have time to sleep away.”

“You won’t kill me,” Zax said. “You need my blood to make more serum, and if I’m dead, that limits your supply, doesn’t it?”

“Ah, the situation has changed, Zaxony. The people who built this station had staggeringly advanced technology, even by my standards. Their biotech laboratory is particularly fine, and has ample feedstock and replicators. I can take a few samples from your floating corpse, multiply your blood volume in the lab, and create more serum than I’d need in a lifetime. That said, I’m not eager to do an EVA to recover your body. I could just cut off the air to the room you’re in and collect your corpse at my leisure… but I suspect Ragweed there can find a way to feed you oxygen, can’t she?”

Minna was glaring at all the walls in turn.

“Of course she can. Listen, Zaxony. I don’t want to kill you. I am a man of science, not a murderer. Let me take your blood, and then you and your merry band can be on your way. I’ll stay here for a few weeks – there are sufficient supplies, and I need to recreate my traveling case anyway. The new version might be even better than before. The scientists here were doing work on transcranial magnetism and deep-brain stimulation with interesting applications for behavioral modification, too… While I’m studying, you’ll have time to put dozens of worlds between us, and I won’t be pursuing you anymore, so there’s no reason to think we’ll ever even cross paths again. We can be estranged friends who never talk. Doesn’t that sound civilized?”

“Vicki, is he telling the truth about the airlock?” Zax said.

“I am afraid so. There is only a single door between us and the void.”

“I have sedative patches, they act instantly, but–”

“Reach for anything, and die,” the Lector said. “I’ve pursued you across hundreds of worlds, Zaxony Delatree, and I have expended all my patience. You took my supplies, you stranded my friend in a world of glass–”

“Polly was not your friend. You slipped up once and called her your pet, so don’t pretend she meant anything to you.”

“Polly had an admirably straightforward approach to life, Zaxony, and I found her very amusing, which is more than I can say about you. I have been patient. I have been kind. I am done being both. I know cooperating with me is abhorrent to you, but what was it your potted plant said? ‘Adapt or die.’ No more negotiations.”

After a moment, Zax said, “All right.”

“I’ll open the hatch,” the Lector said. “You come out. Minna and her shiny ring with all the opinions stay inside.”

Minna flung herself at Zax, embracing him and babbling, “Please be careful Zax, he is a bad weed and he will steal your sun, do not believe him.” He hugged her back, and didn’t even notice when she unobtrusively slipped me off her finger and into his pocket. Minna is more observant and smarter than we gave her credit for. I regret that… and I miss her. I hope that she is safe and well, and that her considerable resources and ability to adapt allowed her to escape her situation. But when I run calculations based on my available data, the extrapolations are not heartening.