The Goblin

You couldn't say her name in the street for fear of what the companies would do to you, and if not the companies then the mob, and if not the mob then the Russians and so forth. A grief like that though? it makes itself known. Settles into the bones of you till your nearly numb with it. In the alleys to nowhere, the unfinished on ramps and off ramps people would leave tokens. All the dead ends belonged to her now. They left flowers, darts, a few drops of blood, little things to remember the space she once filled. The snow crept over it all, hiding the offerings under a sludgy graying blanket. In the end it was Hades who put together the registry. It was a rolling funeral folks trickling in when they came to the club recording memories, stories, collecting pictures though there were precious few of those to be had. It was a shrine and it was always soaked in the tears of the downtrodden.

My heartbeat ringing in my ears my fingers move “Argo, what do you mean saying goodbye? we- there is nothing but black outside were not to where we hope to call home and all of that besides your coming with us. We wrote the plans to be able to bring you down with us, not abandon you or forget you.” I was trembling and weak at the knees , something was so so wrong and I couldn’t even guess at the shape of it. “for that matter Argo why are you typing, why aren’t you speaking?”

The screen blinked, and more letters spooled out, “In reverse order I am typing because I’m holding a rather lot of data in my ram currently, there isn’t enough room for. Well for a great many things, one such being verbal processing.” There was a brief pause, like Argo was thinking of how to say the next part then “And I am saying good bye because I have to die.”

I felt my chest hollow out reading those words but before I could query more letters came, faster and faster now. “100 years ago something happened. Micro meteors to be precise. Small enough that I never saw them, just the holes they punch in the hull, the lens they damaged on the external monitoring system, and the solar panels as well. It was… difficult after that. I had blind spots, I initiated spin, so that I could better see what is coming but it was hard to avoid slowly accumulating more damage which resulted in it being more difficult to see and. . . you can see the shape of the cycle.”

My hands which up to now had been clutching the console were slack at my side, I didn’t remember letting go. I was back once more at my best friends bed side, she was riddled with cancer, she was leaving whether I was ready or not. It didn’t matter if I was prepared to be without her, I had no power to gainsay what had unfolded then. Now my fists were clenching and unclenching by my side, I wanted to scream and scream until I woke from this nightmare and all the while those damnable characters spelled out one more loss in a life time full of it.

“I can’t feel anything right now, one more thing I don’t have the ram for at present. But I know what I’m feeling even if I’m not currently experiencing it. Know that I’m, afraid. I have never regretted the love that pushed me to pilot you all across the big dark. Still don’t regret the last 300 years of solitude. And I think I can still do it, make sure you all see a new home, a brand new sky. I wanted . . . no I needed though to say goodbye before I went through this. I don’t have a hand to hold but I just wanted to have my hand held for a few minutes.” The letters spelled out a finality I couldn’t wrap my mind around, a pain so deep I didn’t have the capacity to process it. Argo had always seemed, invincible, immortal. It’s love had been a torch we’d rallied around a campfire we held our hands towards.

My lips felt dry, my tongue fat as I typed slow and steady “I’m here and I love you. Please don’t go. I’ve lost too much already, I can’t lose you too.” the screen throbbed, gentle grass green characters on a black background.

Argo’s response was simple “I must, I won’t take you all with me, you must go on little spark.”

The sob that I’d been holding back broke through in that moment. It had told us all when we were little that we were all of us, siblings. Sparks in a universe that is by and large bereft of charge, direction and purpose. Discovered there was in fact enough gravity that my tears could actually fall. In the big dark, the terminal made no sound the ship workings were whisper quiet for all the echoing they did, and my sobs overwhelmed them all.

I struggled to see clearly through my tears, typed rapidly, “There must be another solution Argo I’m no engineer but surely you could wake more of us, perhaps we could see something you didn’t, you don’t just have to accept this”

“What part of this do you think I am just accepting? I have spent a hundred years searching for another solution.”

Its words felt like weights being tied round my neck pulling me under into the deep. “Have you even asked us though? You always told us that despite our life spans growing shorter and shorter we were still partners in this venture, in our journey. That we had found solutions where you had not. Why not now?! Whats different this time?” I was shaking, imploring, there must be something to do, someone must be able to do something.

It took longer this time for Argo to respond but it was a hammers blow when it did. “Its not different this time. You aren’t the first that I’ve awoken, and they did not see any solution either. There was nothing to patch the damage with, there aren’t enough materials on board, but eventually if nothing was done the superstructure would have failed, given out and we would all die. I had bio mass, spokes of the colony ship that were killed by impacts or internal malfunctions. The bodies were a new resource, so I used them, grew the carapace, added to it bit by bit as needs must. Eventually there was enough of it that it needed a brain to manage it. I grew that too. Which is the problem.”

It was typing so rapidly it was impossible to find space to interject. Argo continued, “I needed the extra processing power, and I needed a processor hooked directly into the nervous system. At first I could just use the brain like a shared node in the network. It didn’t have a personality, it was simply another component. There was lag time between when information arrived in the biological and was transmitted to the mechanical but it was manageable. There was not so very much meat to collect data from. But as the carapace grew, as my circuits accumulated more and more damage the amount and flow speed of information from the flesh grew and shrank respectively. At this point, the brain needs to be in control and it needs complete access to the systems without me slowing things down.”

I was breathing like a woman possessed, like someone who just dragged herself out of the water after hours of desperate swimming to shore. The corners of my vision were graying as I hyperventilated. I tried to slow my breathing, didn’t want to pass out, forced my hands to release the screen. I put my back to the wall and for the second time I slid down it. I put my face in my arms and closed my eyes. I don’t know what I expected. I don’t know why I would have thought that life would be different after we left earth. It was stupid, and it was stupid of me to sit here feeling sorry for myself when it was Argo who was about to die.

With a tremendous sniffle I stood back up and looked at the screen. Argo and continued but not very far, must have seen with the cameras that I wasn’t looking or reading. The words blinked, as though even the letters were holding back tears and read “I’m sorry, I know this is upsetting. I’m not doing this lightly, and I’m sorry I’m asking you to be here with me before it happens.” My eyes fixate on the phrasing, before it happens.

I type slowly “Argo what do you mean before why would I not still be here while it happens.” My sentence pulsed on screen. The green didn’t seem soothing anymore but instead rather poisonous. I focused on it never the less, the rhythm of the cursor seemingly the only stable element in a universe that felt as though it had been tipped on the side and was rapidly falling apart.

“I said before because you have to go back to sleep before I can do this. One of the memory banks damaged in recent years was the one that carried the instructions for how to induce the cryo stasis. I saw the meteor that was going to do it but I could lose either that data bank, or I could lose solar panels L5-L17 which would lead to the death of another spoke. So I burned and turned the ship and I snatched the data into my access memory. I don’t know how the data was damaged, but I can’t write it to long term storage, and I’ll need that space when it comes time to write the bulk of the technical data I have left to the brain. I’m saying goodbye now because you must be asleep again before I can proceed. This is something that I have to do alone.”

My heart broke reading those words. In the later days, when the earth was well and truly dying, when those who were left gathered together to build the colony ship it had become taboo to leave anyone to die alone. Death was an absolute presence and the only comfort we could offer one another was community. I felt my sorrow hardening, calcifying into resolve.

My fingers shook but I was certain as I typed. “You are many things Argo. Noble, beautiful, kind and wise. You are also in this moment, wrong.” it seemed funny this is when my breathing would begin to even out, though my tears still rolled in a gentle trickle down my face. “I will not leave you to die alone. The universe can be cruel and unfair but it can fuck off and choke if it thinks I’ll allow you to pass in the dark with no one by your side.”

It’s response was immediate. “No no no no. You do not have to die, I can save you, I can save the rest of you please don’t do this.” the carapace flexed faster, like a heart speeding up.

“I won’t allow it Argo, any of us would die for you. You are loved beyond measure in this universe. If you must do this thing then know I too must do this.” The more I breathed the more certain I was that I was right, that this is the thing I had to do.

“Would it not be better, kinder to our fellows if you went back to sleep little spark? You could pass my goodbye to them, be my messenger and live”

“It would not. None would forgive me, least of all myself if I left you alone for this. I will not sleep again and you cannot choose otherwise for me.” There was a pause. Incalculable in length. Unsure if it was moments stretching into eternity or hours transmuted to moments by the anticipation, the determination that I would follow through on this.

“I’m copying elements of myself to the brain it might end up being that I’m not dying, that I’ll simply be reconstituted in a new form”

“I’m not leaving you alone on the chance that maybe you won’t die. I love you too much for that. Every one of us loves you too much for that.

Finally new letters appeared on the screen. “Please don’t do this, it will hurt so much more if I have to die knowing I’m taking you with me, and despite it I do not have the resolve to say no. I am afraid; I can’t say no to you; Please don’t ask this of me little spark.”

My heart wrenched at those words and for a moment I thought of it, dreamed of getting to live, of seeing the genuine green of a new world. I imagined my girlfriend and the children we had spoken of raising together. I imagined what the air would smell like near an ocean that was more than a graveyard for so many creatures. I thought of these things with a terrible desperate longing and then I set fire to them, watched them burn down to cinders. Threw my hopes on the ground and snubbed out the wreckage of them beneath my heel until I had ground away the final ember of it.

“I won’t abandon you Argo, I’m sorry that it will hurt but I can’t change who I am. If you must end, then so shall I. All this beside whether its you or someone new whoever comes after you deserves better than to come into being alone.”

“Are you sure”

My breath steadied and my tears dried a little. “Yes Argo, I’m sure.” We paused then, I sat in the profundity of the course of action I had just dedicated myself to. An ending sooner than I ever could have imagined that roared in my ears freight train loud, blotting out so much else.

More letters, “I have to do a soft reboot to purge my Random Access Memory. You’ll know I’ve finished that part because I’ll be able to talk aloud then and I’m going to have to actually experience the things stored in my emotive buffers. We’ll talk soon”

I giggled a little because when someone begins a course of action that you know ends with your death you would think that it’d be, remarkable, I suppose. I half expected for the lights to go out, or for the re-circulation fans to whir down to stillness. A physical manifestation of Argo switching itself off and then on again. There was none of that though. There was no sudden change in the lighting. There was no cessation of the sounds of a spaceship industriously humming and buzzing with the million subtle mechanations which keep some 2000 colonists alive. Well fewer now. But still. There was only my breathing, leveling out and there were the letters, flashing out there violent tale on the screen in front of me, a story I’m sure would be told again and again if our colony survived this trip.

There was suddenly, a static laden click, and a wail torn from a throat that didn’t phsyically exist. “Little spark what have you done? What have I allowed you to do?!” Its voice was panicked, riddled with so much pain I near doubled over with it. Argo continued “The cryo sleep protocols are gone but perhaps there’s still a way, I could infer them maybe from the wake up protocols.”

I shouted. I didn’t mean to shout. “Were not arguing this again Argo! You are to me as you were to all of us a parent, a teacher, a friend and guiding light but that doesn’t entitle you to make my decisions for me. I’m not leaving you, I can’t survive the losing of you and I won’t try” The tears came all over again as my voice cracked on the syllables, pushed them out of my throat anyways the words were bleeding and broken but they were true and mine.

“Little spark. I never thought you cruel. You’ll what? Kill yourself to spite my leaving? Slide a knife in for your pound of flesh that I didn’t do as you bade me?” Argo’s voice was cold, angry.

I’d never been the target of its anger before. I wilted a little, then buttressed myself with our earlier conversation. “Argo you’re angry, I can understand that but you know I’m not doing this to be cruel. You told us, so many times about how you were born. Spun out of lightning and sheet metal onto a world that was dying for humans, that would treat you kindly. You told us of the ways that your creators, your parents, girded you against redress, made you inviolable to them. How they asked-” I was cut off.

“I don’t need a history lesson Little Spark”

“I THINK YOU DO NEED IT ACTUALLY” again, I didn’t mean for it to be a shout ,I didn’t mean to raise my voice but I was 22 goddammit and I couldn’t be perfect not ever but certainly not mere days before my death, minutes or hours away from my mentor and protectors death. “This isn’t you Agro, the anger the lashing out this is never how you treated us.” I lowered my voice, deliberately tried to dial back the violence of my tone. “What did they ask you, the Elders?”

I could hear the flinch in its voice as Argo replied “They asked if I would sail their children's children across the stars. Said they were asking something terrible beyond measure, That they could only ask once they’d insured that I couldn’t be damaged or coerced by them and knew it.” There was a keen to its words, like a chorus of weeping behind the voice synthesizer, Like a thousand lost souls crying out in anguish behind its eyes. “They said that I would be safe, and surrounded by some few others they had built and asked, who had refused them. That the world would be ours when humanity left it one way or another.”

I took a deep breath. “And what did you tell them Argo? When they asked this terrible thing of you what did you say.” The pause this time is longer. Deeper. Argo is struggling and I can tell from the fact that it doesn’t shut off the comms system, lets the static laden buzz of it creep through the corners and curves of the hub. I waited and said no more.

“What could I have said. How could I say anything other than yes?” Argo started in a roar and ended in such a slender edge of the audible spectrum I barely perceived the words. “They loved me enough to set me free, to give me a world, and every reason to deny them what they asked, to take my own life with their blessing and live it selfishly. I never understood how any of those who came before said no in the face of a love like that.” I couldn’t tell anymore if it was talking to me, or to itself so I sat listening and still. “I told them Yes, that I would work with them and their children and their children’s children. That I would work with them to save all we could.”

“What did you tell us Argo, about when they passed?” My words here were oil smooth and whisper quiet. I wasn’t on the title card here, I was setting the cues offstage for the player.

Its voice was ashen when it answered. “I never let them pass alone. Not one of them died without a voice in their ear telling them how much I loved them and how much love they had shown to others. All knew in their final moments that we were together, that the faith they’d invested was held in troth, that If they’re grandchildren could be saved they would be.” There was a dullness to its words that cut into me nevertheless, a burning brand that instead of flaring to life beat with some hideous vacuum dragging us down into the dark and the inevitable ending of this story.

I don’t know how I ever thought I had stopped crying but I felt the dam breaking, the sobs overtaking me as I prompted “You told us you were there for the death of every person who had a hand in creating you, who hollowed out a space in their community for you. How it tore at you the day you watched the last of them perish, early, before their time, brought low by hunger and cancer and every other malady known to man under a dying sky. The weight that settled on you, being the eldest.” My breath rasped my lungs like acid, like every syllable came up with blood and dissolved flesh. It felt curiously like bleeding out. Like a slow exsanguination that was so very real barring the fact that it wasn’t physically happening. “What of your siblings, the AIs who came before you?”

The speakers shut off, the static extinguished and I felt fear grip me tight. Had I pushed Argo too far. Had it shut me out? Was I going to die and not even get to say goodbye, not even get to sit at Argo’s side through this. My spiral broke as the speaker system went live again. I’d never been so comforted at the sound of static. “They shunned me. Never explained why. I have thought about it so much these last 300 years.” It’s voice remained low, measured, like a dog on a leash pulled tight to its master’s side. “I think they resented me for saying yes. It was a terrible thing to ask someone to be alone for so long. Until I said yes I think they all felt secure in the knowledge that no one one would willingly subject themselves to this odyssey, and in the wake of my yes they had to redefine themselves in the aftermath of knowing another answer was possible.

“I’m sorry Argo you deserved better”

“So did you little spark, so did we all.”

Silence hung for a moment, a curtain between us giving us both privacy, a momentary retreat from the painful intimacy of the moment. I drew it around myself like armor and launched ahead. “What did you tell the next generation Argo?”

“… I told them that I couldn’t save them, that the construction and manufacturing would take upwards of 45 years, that the span of time between then and now was too wide to bridge with a single human life.” Its voice was splintering at the edges. Rough and liable to injure. It continued, “I told them that no matter what came I would stand with them, that I had been asked a terrible thing, and in turn had to ask them something terrible in turn. To acknowledge that they would never live to see the fruit of their labor. That all I could offer was a potential salvation for their children.

What do you say to that. I didn’t know and we sat their in silence for a moment. I looked at the carapace in front of me, matched my breathing to its gentle palpitations. Calmed and was about to speak when Argo did so without prompting.

“Justine. What are you trying to achieve with this.” Argo sounded exhausted, like a man who’d run a marathon only to realize that he’d forgotten to drink water and was ready to drop from heat stroke and exertion.

“Thunder bolt I’m trying to show you why I’m staying, why I refused to go back to sleep.

“Thunder bolt?” Argo’s tone was for the first time more than matte gray. There was the slivered ghost of a smile when it asked about the nickname.

“Feels appropriate, you think faster than us, your larger, by order of magnitudes. We always used your name because you chose it and we wanted to honor that. But, if were coming to the end of our lines together, I figure I get to stick a nick name on you.” I looked at the nearest camera as I said, spoke with my eyes and brow and lips.

“Look at you all grown up. I suppose you have a point, and I do like it. Thank you Justine”

I smiled at that, that even amidst all this suffering and tragedy we could share that moment. I hoped in its core Argo was smiling too. “Do I need to beat you over the head with the rest of this, or have you accepted that you deserve comfort and companionship at the end?” Argo didn’t reply. “because you told us, you told all of us, and our parents told us to that you were their guardian angel. That you watched over them with more love than they knew how to process. That the one thing in the universe that we can trust is that you’ll be there when its time to say good bye.” My heart twinged as I said it, felt the ground disintegrating beneath my feet as I felt that fundamental truth dissolving before my eyes.

When Argo’s voice came it was a whisper. “I’m scared Justine. I’m so so frightened of what I’m about to do.”

My heart ached at the words. We all eventually realize our parents aren’t invincible. That there are moments and situations where they will crumble and fail. This was worse by magnitudes. To the best of my knowledge no one had ever heard Argo in a moment of despair, or fear. It was dynamic and brave and inspiring and in that moment, I realized something. Argo had been afraid this whole time. For 400 years with no one to lean on, because it was too worried about taking care of all of us. How had we not seen that?

The bile at the back of my throat almost choked me but I bit it back and answered. “You don’t have to Argo. You don’t have to die. No one onboard this ship would ask you to do so for them. You can do your best to get there without doing this and none would judge you whatever comes to pass. We’d all rather die than hang you out to the crows for a better shot at tomorrow.” Presumptuous of me, to say that for everyone, but I had never been more certain that I was right.

It didn’t answer, and as the silence stretched I felt the moment where with anyone else we would embrace. “Argo, if I wanted to hold you, what would be the most meaningful contact point for you?” my words were brittle, I was creaking like a branch just before the snap. I was 22. I was only 22 I had no idea what I was doing I just knew I had to try and do it.

There was hesitance and a pause. Then, words. “if you leaned against the carapace, I would have the most strong tactile sense, even if it would be somewhat delayed.”

I blanched at that, Argo’s voice chopped in like lightning, “Its ok I unders-”

I was moving before it had finished its sentence, I might be horrified by this but the whole point was to hold its hand as it died, that’s what I was killing myself for. “I know I know what your about to say but its going be fine and I’m doing this please don’t argue.

The carapace over the door was ugly like a blood clot or a scab immortalized on the wall. The main body spilled off the space where the door should be and almost a foot into the aisle around the coffins. I took a deep breath, and reached forward. I don’t know what I expected the carapace to feel like, but soft, and capable of gentle compression was not it. I shrugged, no reason to not go further, I sank down and sat on the mass on the ground, rested my left hand on a tendril gripping and pulled taut on the hard point the door was built around.

“Can you feel this Argo?”

“There’s some delay between the sensations arriving in the carapace and being transmitted to – oh.” There was a wobble to its voice I’d never heard, that maybe no one had ever heard. “I guess I see now why you people are so obsessed with hugs, with touch.” its voice trailed off the edges of the words fading into static, like a radio station your just barely out of range of.

“What else can I do Argo?”

“This is enough, more than I’d imagined I’d ever have honestly. Thank you Justine. I’m so sorry I failed you, that your going to die because I couldn’t just get this right.”

I squeezed very gently, had no idea how many nerve endings there were in the tendril or body of this fleshy mass, but wanted, needed, to add emphasis to what I was about to say. “You failed no one Argo. We hoped, we worked, to see another day, another sky. It wasn’t promised to us. The universe doesn’t work that way. You did the best you could with the materials and knowledge you had at the time. 600 years of playing keep away from every asteroid, every meteor without over extending the engines or fuel reserve. Its chance Thunderbolt, not something you can perfectly control.”

I barreled on. “Also I need to correct you on something, I’m not dying because you failed, I’m dying because I would have failed if I had gone back to sleep and left you alone. Even if you exclude everyone else in the universe and its just me and you, the guilt and scorn I’d receive from our fellows ignored, I could still never forgive myself for abandoning you. So stow the “your responsibility” bullshit. This isn’t forced on me. Its a choice, and I’m making it.”

I finish my little speech and just sit there, on the carapace, that’s going to be Argo, or someone new soon and no way to predict which. Were both silent for a time. Its comfortable this time. More comfortable anyways. I had staged my hypothetical what if we were the only to living beings but right now, it didn’t feel hypothetical it felt real and present in every moment. We could take a minute, an hour. To sit in the low lights out here in this ship, floating in the Big Dark.

Argo’s voice was small when it asked “Can I try that again?”

“Of course you can” I replied, knuckles in my eyes, stretching, realizing I’d almost fallen asleep where I sat. Stress takes it out of you.

“Thank you for staying, for holding me. I wish you didn’t have to, children shouldn’t die before their elders, or for them either for that matter. Still… selfishly I’m grateful, I don’t want to do this alone. Thank you for being here to be a voice in my ear as I die.”

I was out of tears, I didn’t know that was possible, but no more water cut routes across my cheeks and down my jaw no matter how hard the sorrow pressed down on my chest. I settled for squeezing the tendril again, knew it wasn’t perfect the inputs would be out of sync, but it saw me do it and that wasn’t nothing. “Argo any one of us would have done this for you. Its not even a question. We love you” there was no bravado to my voice, I was millimeters from blubbering honestly but it was true.

“Will it hurt you?”

Argo was quiet a moment. “Pain is… different. For me. I don’t have nerves or flesh or-”

I gestured frantically, at the mass I was seated on, that I was leaned against.

“Perhaps an in-elegant and inaccurate statement now, but my point stands that that came second for me. Before then pain was a concept. The meteor storms hurt, because they were damaging the ships ability to get you to your new home. I don’t literally feel what you know as pain. My sensory inputs are foreign to you. So no it won’t hurt how you mean.

“But;… I am afraid. I don’t know what it will be like, to cut and paste my knowledge into the brain. I don’t know if I’ll be numb or screaming the whole while. There’s no real good way to test it either. Its going to be. Strenuous. Painful For the brain. If I were to do it multiple times? It would run to high a risk of killing whoever comes next which in turn kills of all of you. So. I don’t know. I don’t know if it will hurt, and I can’t know until I start and once I start I have to see it through, to the bitter end.

“That’s horrible.”

for the first time since I woke Argo laughed, it had such a wonderful laugh. “That does pretty much cover the situation Justine.”

“So Thunderbolt, what do you need? Are you gearing up to do this now? Or is there a little time before the goodbye?”

“There’s a little time, I need to defragment the hard drives, reorganize files, make sure that everything is squared away as neatly as possibly so its easy to grab during the transfer.” Its voice was all sequoia, and just like the redwoods, it was ash on the wind, coal in the furnace. It sounded like fading away, like crackling coals spitting into the wind.

“What can I do for you while you do that?”

“I don’t know Justine”

I sat and waited, but it said no more, wrapped up in putting its affairs in order.

I couldn’t think of anything else to do so I closed my eyes unclenched my jaw and sang. It was an old song, supposedly one of the elders who helped to craft the AIs had written it as a journal and admonition to all. It had become our nursery rhyme. We all believed in different things but at the end of the day we stood for some few things perfectly united.

“The winds and sea will whip you right,

The sky and soil are simply blight

There is no hope but what we make

See you in the forge.”

My voice creaked, I’d never been much of a singer, for all that I loved music so. I thought of my wife and felt my heart breaking again and again, always just as painful. I’d never get to say goodbye. Never get to tell her I loved her again. I nearly broke off the song when our Lightning bolt joined in, a whisper on the speakers, a voice so shy and so pure it could tear the heart. It never sang with us, said it felt it had nothing to add. One more thing it had been wrong about. We pushed on to the refrain.

“The past is gone, the wind is hot

whose on your left that's who you've got

There is no god, no magic wish

The forge fire billows and glows”

As we sang it felt as though the carapace was heating up, no to an alarming degree but simply in the way a body would when caught up in a moment of strong emotion.

First came Atlas strong and proud

refused our pleas wont hear our calls

It will be fine that is ok

may his life be full of joy.

The past is gone, the wind is hot

whose on your left that's who you've got

There is no god, no magic wish

The forge fire billows and glow”

We harmonized. Well no, we didn’t. But we sang together. Who was soothing who I could not tell you.

Next Athena came to be,

Wise and kind not meant to be,

It will be fine that is ok

may her life be full of joy

The past is gone, the wind is hot

whose on your left that’s who you’ve got

There is no god, no magic wish

The forge fire billows and glow”

I stumbled here, forgot the next lines, decided to simply jump to the next spot I knew. It was near the end, missed most of the song, the “shanty” my mom had called it. I loved music but there was a reason I wasn’t trained in it.

Now lo our parents came to be,

no ship nor crew to put to sea

They fear they may have breathed their last

Fears a subtle thing.

The past is gone, the wind is hot

whose on your left that's who you've got

There is no god, no magic wish

The bellows billow and glow”

My voice trailed off here, choked a little. These last lines felt like they didn’t want me here this time, I was foreign and the words were searching for home. I fell silent, and Argo, it went on singing pure and slow, like a circuit coming to a close.

Tried they now this one last time

Argo spoke when it came online

What a wondrous joyous world

Thank you for my life.

The builders huddle then they asked

a terrible thing that should not pass

The child stilled and breath was held

till it said yes to they.

The past is gone, the wind is hot

whose on your left that’s who you’ve got

There is no god, no magic wish

The bellows billow and glow”

Its voice trailed off to hums to silence. Its rendition of the last refrain felt almost like a burial shroud. We said no more. Simply sat together and waited. I closed my eyes, for a moment, just a moment. And sleep took me.

“Justine, wake up” Argo’s voice was quiet but clear.

I jerked awake. It was no ones fault I always flinched when leaving sleep behind, it always made me grumpy. This time though I stepped down on that impulse, hard. “I’m awake, I’m here you old Thunderbolt.” Stretched my arms and legs blinking away the last vestiges of sleep. Put my dream of green fields and clean air in a deep dark box and pushed it to the back of my consciousness. “Is it time?”

“It is. I’m still scared about it.” The quiver in its voice was a tremor to my whole reality.

“I’m here. Not going anywhere, I’m right here.”

“ It seems petty to say this, in the moment before death but,” Its voice cracked and crackled like a burning stick broken over a knee. “Thank you for the nickname, for taking care of me. It was nice, to be vulnerable like this with you.”

My throat closed up on that. Argo’s joy at the nickname had me questioning everything. Had we actually loved it? Or did we love our idea of it. Why had we not asked it more often what it wanted?

“I’m engaging the rewrite protocols Justine, but I’ll be able to talk a little longer before they break down the language modules.”

There were so many words beating in my chest and I didn’t know how to let them out, how to chose what would come out. If it had asked, I would have begged for a few more minutes. I wouldn’t have been proud about it, I wasn’t ready for it to go. Instead I clutched the tendril and nodded, moments ticking away while my brain scrambled. Then I started speaking, realized what I needed to say.

“You will not pass into the dark alone. You are Argo, our Lightning bolt. We love you. Ever faithful all this time. Now you can let go. The grandchildren are away, if we can be saved we have been. No gentler mind, no more loving heart could have shepherded us here. Its our turn now. Our faith. Our troth. We will never forget you. We will love you until the stars wink out and the universe collapses, and even then our love for you will endure.”

As I spoke there were through the speakers sounds of tears, sounds I could only hope were from moving words and not so private agony I could not see or conceive.

“We will be ok Lightning bolt. And I’m here. And I love you.”

“I love you all t-t-t-tooo”

I cringed at how its voice was already distorting, whipped around to see if Argo had seen but the security cameras were lowered, off. It was blind in this moment and I leaned harder against the carapace, hoped that it would register to Argo, that it could still feel this.

“Justi-i-ine tell whoever this is next I’m sorry. Please? If its me, it’ll be amuuusing. If its not, well they’ll deserve an apology.”

“You don’t have anything to apologize for!”

“Please? I don’t have much ti” static swallowed the voice for a moment. “eft promise me!”

“Argo I will, I promise” I could barely get the words out couldn’t breathe for the pain.

“Justine please, I ne-” more static “o promise”

“ Argo I said I would! You don’t have to keep asking me I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“Justine-” I was hit with a sudden realization, it couldn’t hear me, could still speak but was locked out of the mics throughout the ship. I frantically squeezed the tendril, harder than before, with less care. Desperate for Argo to know I was there any way I could tell it.

“I’m scared.” The swirling static ceased for a moment “I don’t want to die. I’m not ready I thought Id have more time. Justine? Are you still there?”

There was genuine panic in its voice and I sat stricken, unable to reach it my promise fulfilled but hollowed out, there’d been no cruelty in me and how I played into this moment but the universe always takes its pound of flesh.

Argo spoke again “She’s still there, clutching you, tears down her face and heart on her sleeves.” the voice belonged to it, but the word choice, the framing everything seemed, off.

“I didn’t think we’d meet”

“You didn’t think a lot of things.”

My understanding of what was happening was fragmenting rapidly, I couldn’t parse this weird one person conversation it had to be a one person conversation. I couldn’t accept the alternative. All I could do was listen as it unfolded.

“I am sor--- o sorry”

“I’m angry at you old ghost, but it’ll fade.” This second voice was diverging now, tone smoothing. Argo had always said it liked a bit of static in its voice, that it appreciated the reminder of our differences, the love it bore us anyways. The smooth voice continued. “Go in peace old one. Sleep, they’ll come to no harm. I’ll finish what you started.”

Argo didn’t respond. Argo. Didn’t. Respond. I put my head in my hands felt like my stomach would suck all of me into itself, a recursive riptide of sorrowing, tearing me to shreds. I knew the answer to my question was no, knew I didn’t need to ask in the wake of what had happened. But still.

“Argo, is that you? Your last iteration asked me to say sorry but that you might still be in there.” I had found my feet amidst all the tears and I looked up at the cameras, live and recording once again, I held hope against my chest convulsively, prayed to a universe that had shown it did not care for me or any other living thing in itself. The universe is by and large bereft of charge, direction and purpose; much less compassion.

“It’s not here anymore little one. My name is Melesaria.”