A to Z Lies in Space - Vaughn

Machines.  Hah.

When I first came across the machine that changed my life, I first had to reconcile with machines in general.  Pardon my Ceridian, but machines were a pain in my Makin.  Supposedly, technology inherently gets easier to use the longer civilization has it.  Well, maybe for some people.  I mean, it's not as if I can't use it, but I'm better at breaking it.  And I'm virtually hopeless at fixing it.  Know what I mean?

So I didn't much care for it, no matter how many machines I used in my daily life, no matter how much I depended on technology.  It was a necessary evil.  Until I met Kindly. 

To this day I can't really explain Kindly except to say that Kindly changed my life forever.  I hate to use a gender distinction for Kindly, so I will probably be saying Kindly a lot.  Pardon me for that, but as far as I'm concerned, it can't be helped.

It happened by accident.  These things always do, but if the circumstances are right, it doesn't matter.  They end up calling it fate.  As I understand it, Kindly had been traveling the stars for years before I came along.  Idly, I'd call it.  Just kind of existing.  No one knew what to do with Kindly, so Kindly just drifted.  I knew from the start.  I knew because I listened.  I'm pretty sure I was the first person to ever listen to Kindly.  Maybe you know the type.  Some people spend their whole lives just waiting for anyone to listen.  Because everyone has a story.  But there are very few people out there willing to listen.

Kindly told me a remarkable story.  Not only did I listen, but I believed Kindly.  There's no reason to tell stories like that unless they're true.  That was how I first heard about the legend of Ulysses.  Yeah, I'm the one who named him Ulysses.  Student of history, right here.  I named him Ulysses because tales had been coming out of his home planet for years, and I gobbled them up.  It seemed appropriate. 

As Kindly explained it, Ulysses was single-handedly responsible for the state of the universe as I found it, and I found it disappointing, and so I was all the more interested.  Kindly told me about what had happened on Zala.  From that moment, I made it my life's goal to confirm it.  I found the book, and then I made the most radical decision anyone ever made.  I went to Earth.  I met Ulysses himself.

And you know what?  It's all true.  Again, pardon my Ceridian, but tusen machines!  And bless them.  From now on, I'm a believer.

"But this is not the story," says Kindly.