Often the most vivid of dreams cannot be separated from conscious thoughts. This is especially true when thinking back over time, trying to remember if something actually happened.
—Observation of Dr. Rachel Ginsberg
When Billy awoke, he had trouble figuring out where he was. He was lying down somewhere on a soft surface, looking up at a featureless white ceiling, just staring at it, blinking his eyes to get accustomed to the light.
Then a face drew near, a woman leaning over him, smiling gently. She had silver hair and brown eyes, and looked vaguely familiar, though he could not put a name with the face. “You’ve had a rough time of it,” she said. “Your dream had you trapped, and I had to use everything I knew, and a regimen of drugs, to break you free. You almost seemed to be in a coma, but an odd one, a babbling coma, if such a thing exists. You were talking a mile a minute, but we couldn’t understand what you were saying, and you wouldn’t wake up. There were some identifiable words, but they didn’t seem to form sentences or coherent thoughts. I was quite worried about you.”
He looked at her dumbly, then remembered. Dr. Rachel Ginsberg. He looked around, realized he was in a room adjacent to his hidden laboratory in the core of the ship, where he had placed a bed years ago, so that he could rest when he was working late on matters involving the robotics of Skyship. The loyal Starbot stood nearby, facing in his direction, his lights blinking in a regular pattern.
“After not being used much, the bedspread and sheets were dusty, so we had to change them,” she said. She felt his temple, took his pulse. “You look much better. Starbot and I were quite concerned about you. He brought you here, summoned me.”
Billy nodded appreciatively toward the robot, saw the lights blink excitedly on his torso, as if he were a loyal dog wagging his tail at the extra attention.
And to the attentive doctor, Billy said, “Thank you.”
“What were you dreaming about?” she asked. “Or should I ask, what was the nightmare about?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Just fuzzy details remain. Nothing important.” He was lying to her. The dream remained vivid in his memory, a swath of silver death moving ominously across the surface of AmEarth, singling out his enemies and obliterating them.
Behind her, he saw a faint glimmer of silver in the air. He found this alarming and favorable at the same time. It was a sign that the space devils—the ones who had not yet entered his body—were still observing him. He needed to lure them in to join the others, and then take action to destroy all of them at once. But how?
Billy sat up, ordered Starbot to bring his maglev chair to him.
“Not so fast,” Rachel said, putting up a halting hand to the robot. “Give yourself time to recover, Billy. You need rest. Starbot can bring you whatever you want to eat, and I’ll be nearby to make certain you don’t return to that nightmare.”
“I don’t intend to return to it,” he said. “Starbot, get the chair.”
Now the robot moved to comply, and helped Billy into it. As Starbot did this, the robot said, “The creatures are in the air of this room. I can see them now.”
“I see them, too,” Billy said. He didn’t bother to explain to Rachel, and she didn’t ask, so perhaps Starbot had already said something to her about them. It didn’t matter. She was one of his most trusted confidantes.
“I’m going to be fine,” he assured her. “Go away now, Rachel. I will summon you if I need you, or Starbot will.”
“Are you sure you want me to leave?” she said. “I could wait in another room, staying close just in case.”
“It was only a dream,” he said. “I would have come out of it eventually, though I do appreciate your efforts.” He smiled, put the chair in motion, heading for the adjacent laboratory, where he had a work bench. “Go,” he said again, glancing back at her from the chair as he went through the doorway. “I’ll be fine. I just want to tinker a little in my lab. It relaxes me, allows me to think.”
“As you wish.” She sounded hurt and disappointed, but swung her medical satchel over her shoulder, and left.
~~~
At his custom work bench, U-shaped and low so that he could access it from his chair, Billy made adjustments to a machine prototype, a unit that would do human imprinting on his Lazarus series robots with only half the cellular material required in the original unit. Starbot stood on his left.
“Would you like me to run more tests on this, using my programs?” Starbot asked. “Or is it satisfactory to you now?”
Billy had not had time to finish constructing the upgraded device yet, but the theoretical programs Starbot had run for him in the design stage indicated it should work. Now he just needed to get the prototype built and load cellular material into it. He had the inside open, and used a pinpoint-laser to connect two sensitive, critical cell readers.
He paused, knowing he would never have time to complete this project, or another one. It gave him great sadness. He had experienced so much joy in this laboratory, developing various types of robots.
He would never complete another project, either, solving the glitch in Lainey’s unit, causing her to hear machine noises internally. She was the only one of the Lazarus series to experience this. He had intended to construct a relay unit identical to the one inside Lainey’s body, and hook it up to a simulation program that would replicate her internal senses from her perspective, trying to duplicate what she had described hearing.
He’d wanted to figure out what was wrong with the Lainey unit, short of dismantling her, and possibly losing important elements of her imprinting—the things about Lainey that were so very similar, and nearly identical to his great lost love, Reanne.
Tears ran down his cheek as he thought of her.
“Are you all right, Master?” Starbot asked. He looked closely at Billy, said, “Your tears are silver.”
The comment did not surprise Billy, as he’d noticed silver moisture in his eyes himself. He wiped the tears away, said, “I was thinking of Reanne.” He waved a hand dismissively. “I’m fine now, fine.”
In the middle of the room he saw a familiar silver-metallic mist flickering in the air, indicating the presence of the space devils. They were keeping their distance this time, not touching him, perhaps wondering in their collective way what he was doing. Tobek had been killed at his laboratory bench while trying to build a device to kill the creatures, so Billy was careful now to tell Starbot what the robot already knew, how the device in front of him would read cells and imprint the data on raw, artificial cellular material so that it could be grown into a Lazarus robot, looking like a human, and acting like one.
He looked at the airborne mass of creatures, said to Starbot, “Do you see them there?”
“Yes, Master. They are curious, aren’t they?”
“They certainly are. You know, the more I see them and understand how they helped me, the more I like them. They really have been critically important to me, preventing my enemies from killing me and taking over Skyship.” He smiled as he looked in their direction. “They’re my saviors.”
“Your saviors, Master? Don’t you want them to leave your body?”
“Certainly not! I like them exactly where they are, and if their brethren outside my body want to join them, that’s fine with me.” Billy didn’t say so, but he sensed strongly that all of the space devils wanted to be together, and did not like being apart from one another, as they were now.
They drew a little closer to him, and even more of them appeared out of thin air directly overhead. Looking around, he saw them behind him, too.
“Master, I must point out, with all due respect to your greatness, that you are not making sense. They invaded your body, and before that they murdered Branson Tobek. I don’t see how you can—”
“Leave me, Starbot, and don’t say anything more against them. They are my friends! I don’t have time to explain what should be perfectly obvious to you. They make me happy, do you hear me, happy! I don’t want to imagine where I would be, or what would have happened to Skyship, if they had not helped. As far as I’m concerned, they are brave and noble creatures.”
All the while, Billy concealed his true motivations from them, and from the loyal Starbot. He had a plan, and it just might work, if he played it right, if he took extreme care. He needed to attract all of the little alien monsters into his body, and then deal with them once and for all. He’d tried to think of ways to destroy them—but so far he’d only come up with one that had any hope of success, and it would cost him his own life.
He thought of Devv and Lainey, and all the systems on Skyship that would need to continue after his death—and the steps he had taken to make certain these two humanlike ‘bots—and everyone else—completed what they needed to do, to keep the huge vessel going. The great ship had many important automatic functions that Tobek had set up, and which Billy never understood. Billy had only added to the original package that Tobek developed, improving on robotic details, creating what Billy considered to be enhancements. That was Billy’s real legacy, and he prided himself on his work.
The robot flashed a pattern of lights that indicated confusion.
“Leave me!” Billy said. He pointed toward the door. As Starbot left, Billy reached into the air, and immersed his hand in a cloud of silver creatures. He felt a pleasant tingling sensation, and thought some of them were entering his body, to join the others inside. But others would not come close, and streaked overhead, this way and that, being more cautious.
Billy smiled, reached out to them....