Gravity

Trudy sat stunned as she watched Earth explode outside the port she crouched against in a spaceship she was still uncertain as to how she’d boarded.  Certainly it was through no conscious effort on her part.  Until this very moment she had never even believed in UFOs, much less known anyone who had ever claimed to be abducted, or particularly care for the science fiction genre in general.  She preferred stories with dragons, thank you very much.

She wondered, absently, if she should have a towel.  Somewhere in the recesses of her mind was a vague reference, possibly something her eternally odd friend Barry (or, she guessed, now to be considered the late Barry) had said to her once, in which context she didn’t have the vaguest of clues, and wasn’t about to begin trying to remember now.

It was dark, wherever it was she’d found herself in the ship, so even if she wanted to guess about that, she didn’t want to try.  Trudy tended to guess poorly.  In high school she’d had a particularly sadistic science teacher come up with a mock game show, and she’d been a poor contestant.  For some reason she kept coming up with the same obviously (obviously!, she still screamed inside her head, even now) wrong answer, and saying it in different ways just as if that would make a difference (although to be fair, Trudy’s British accent is top notch, which she wondered might come in handy now, all considered), which of course it didn’t.

Strange, the things you’ll think about in times of crisis, which Trudy assumed this must be, just as she had to believe that whoever it was that had inexplicably kidnapped her at a time like this had not done so to any expansive degree.  Which was to say, she was likely the sole survivor of the planet, the last human.

That was when she started to cry, in horror of all the things her imagination told her would be different about the aliens anatomically.

Sheer panic was the only thing that prevented anything worse from occurring to her, in the immediate sense.  Later, Trudy would experience all the emotions and thoughts that are no doubt, and in fact have been, occurring to you as you’ve attempted to keep up with this gibberish. 

When the door, or whatever variety of such a thing it happened to be, for brevity’s sake, opened the very next moment, Trudy caught herself in the midst of preparing a wild retort, since after all she wasn’t sure whether or not to be grateful, if indeed there was anyone on the other side.  Except there wasn’t, and so she determined to go in search of someone to address, if not for answers then for something to eat.

Because, just before the world ended, Trudy had been enduring intense negotiations with what she would soon find out to be the responsible party.  It was then she regretted having run for office in the first place.

A to Z Lies in Space - Zuri

On the day Xander murdered my apprentice Yvette, my whole world ended.  I don't know what else to say, but I guess I'll have to try.

The whole thing spiraled out of control so spectacularly, I never had a chance to think about what I was doing.  One minute the whole universe made sense, certainly in its uniquely mad way, but there was an order to it, not because of the Sapo Order, which is something I guess I always understood but very few others did, but Sapo certainly didn't hurt.  I mean, that was the whole point.

One of the few others who understood this was Quentin.  He was like a father to me, never mind master.  He was the one who made it clear to me, very early on, that some things are more important than any one person's life.  It was not a matter of sacrifice to him.  Sacrifice, he said, was what one did when there were no longer any options.  He insisted that there were always options, regardless of whether or not anyone else would ever understand them.  The hardest thing, he said, was letting go of what other people thought, what they said, basically of other people in general.

I guess, in the end, I failed him in that regard.  Because I couldn't let go of Yvette.

The way it happened was this: one day the slayers of Reeve descended on us, and very nearly wiped us all out.  There were survivors.  There are always survivors.  (It would do the universe well to remember this.  There is a remnant of everything that ever existed.  It doesn't matter if no one recognizes it for what it is, because hardly anyone ever truly understands anything.  Basic principles of science tell us that nothing is ever truly lost.  Just let that sink in.  Let it be a solace for you, too.)  The survivors did what they could, which wasn't enough.  I did something radical.  I ensured that my story would be told, because as it was, I was cast as the villain.  When the dust settled, it no longer matters what people believe, because that's just life, life had to resume.  It always does.  And it always seeks the most convenient way forward.  That's only natural.

I survived because I defeated the slayer assigned to me.  I took advantage of my unique opportunity, because until his fall, Reeve had created a monopoly over these robots, keeping them out of general circulation, so that the rest of us had to make due, if we were interested at all, with inferior machines.  These were true masterpieces, not the flimsy models you might be thinking of, but so intricate that the Order was easily defeated by them because they had been designed to defeat it.  The Order fell because we let it fall. 

So I took the slayer and modified it.  Among the arcane arts mastered by Sapo was a truly ancient one, in which the mind of a person could be rescued from the body's extinction.  I had always fancied myself to be Yvette's mother.  I couldn't bear to lose her.  I knew it was wrong, but in this type of relationship, I had been mentored by Quentin.  It had previously been forbidden by the Order, precisely because it clouded one's thoughts, caused them to lose focus, objectivity.  That was the party line, anyway.  In the end, the Order fell because it had become too detached, too distant from those they were supposed to protect.  What you do not understand becomes meaningless to you.

I transferred Yvette's consciousness into the slayer.  I was there when she died, when Xander...murdered her in cold blood.  Of course she wasn't ready to face him.  But I couldn't stop her.  Her impetuousness had given her strength, but at the cost of overconfidence.  Or perhaps she cared too much about me, too.  I guess I'll never know.

The moment Yvette passed into the slayer, I shut it down.  I erased its memory.  And programmed it with a compulsion to learn the truth for itself. 

Somewhere buried deeply, or so I convinced myself, Yvette lived on, and would live again.  What I couldn't stand was to face Yvette myself.  I couldn't.  I couldn't face my greatest failure.  When she died, I died, too.  Well, first I made sure Xander died, too, but he took me with him.  It was a hellacious fight.  The truth, all of it, died with us.  It was the only way it could end.

Some day, she would awaken.  I named this new being Kindly.  The remnant that survived the end (because something always survives) may very well be what awaits her still.  But that is another story.   Not for me. And, I hope, desperately, not for her.  But it is no longer in my hands. 

I consider this a good thing.  Some good came of it.  This story belongs to others now.  It will be told.  Sapo knows, it will be.  All our stories will be told.  The awful tapestry of life demands it.  One way or another, it will all come out. 

I hope she forgives me.

***

"This is the story," says Kindly.  "And now I can rest.  I think I'll tell her.  Because I love her, too."

A to Z Lies in Space - Yvette

[omitted]

A to Z Lies in Space - Xander

As they say on Earth, pride goeth before the fall.

Yes, it was pride, wretched pride.  I couldn't let my life, what I had dedicated it to since before I can remember, fall apart without falling apart, too.  Perhaps I went a little mad.  Not that that is nearly enough excuse.

It was all her fault.  Zuri's.  It sounds weak to say so, but there it is.  If she hadn't existed, hadn't exposed me so appallingly, perhaps things would be different.  No, I'm sure they would be different.  The biggest difference?  I could stand to live with myself.  Even in death.  The worst suffering the dead experience is regret, and the greatest regret imaginable, at least for me, is knowing how profoundly they screwed up in life.

She existed there, mocking my existing, for so long, it became a habit for me to hate her, not so much for anything she did, not for a long time, but for what she represented.  Everything came so easily to her.  She understood, right from the start, how Reeve manipulated everyone, and even though I was in the best position to believe her, of course I didn't.  Quentin was my brother.  I should have believed him, trusted him, but I didn't.  I couldn't.  I suppose that was jealousy, too.  Too often we let such delicate sin corrupt us. 

So when the Order started to crumble, when we began to turn on each other, in that horrible vacuum created by our greatest victory, in the hands of another, the other, I turned on her.  It was so easy.  I felt it was my right.  No one else would admit it.  I knew what had happened.  Master Greer, best of all exemplified what happened.  It was all his fault, I'd like to say.  He started it. 

The arguments of the schoolyard, from the mind of someone who should have known better.

But I finished it.  I made sure the logical conclusion was reached.  I gave the order that destroyed the Order.  It began with the apprentices.  No, it began with the masters.  A systematic slaughter, enacted by the last dregs of Reeve's lieutenants, agents of a different order, dispassionate, disconnected from all.  Robots.  I was repulsed by their very existence, and yet I used them.  Cool, efficient.  A perfect solution.  The one thing Sapo could not manipulate.  That's what our reality was.  A poor one, I now realize. Easy, so very easy, to corrupt.  To annihilate.

Zuri herself was easy to blame, as I said.  So I did what Reeve had done before me, manipulated the situation, made her the enemy.  And personally eliminated her.  And that was that. 

To my everlasting, eternal shame.

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

A to Z Lies in Space - Witt

I'm the one who convinced Vaughn to take Kindly seriously.  He's going to overlook that fact for eternity.  I just know it.  And it only figures.  That's life for you.

I should know.  I've been dealing with this sort of thing for decades, ever since I was an apprentice of the Sapo Order.  Perhaps the most important one ever.  If I hadn't made the decision to turn on Xander, then Zuri would have been lost, and with her, the whole galaxy.  Big stakes, those.  Not that I'm taking all of the credit.  In truth, I'm as much to blame as anyone else.  As much a coward as anyone else.

Actually, to my ever-lasting shame, I further told Vaughn he should keep the whole thing buried.  Let history forget it.  Legend becomes myth.  Myth becomes just a story.  No one believes myths anymore.  Why would they?

Like I said, I'm a coward. 

There was a time I would have argued anything but.  I was just as cocky as anyone else, a time when I knew Xander and Zuri merely as demanding masters in the Order, when I dueled Yvette in the training arena, blissfully unaware of the conflict the masters were hashing out, the gravity of the situation.  I had never questioned Xander, never even dreamed of it.  When he spoke, I took it as the gospel truth, and why shouldn't I have?  His thinking was pure Sapo orthodoxy.  It was Zuri who was the heretic, who sympathized with Quentin, her old master, who had defected to the side of the tyrant Reeve.  What else was I supposed to think? 

It was in the aftermath of Reeve's fall that everything fell apart.  Suddenly no one knew who to trust anymore.  At first I blamed Zuri.  Why wouldn't I?  It seemed only natural.  She became a pariah to the whole Order, before even it fell, victim of a greater betrayal than could possibly have been imagined before, even Quentin's, even Reeve's.  Well, sure, I knew the stories that circulated about Reeve.  Any good apprentice would. 

I assumed the villain was Zuri, but it was Xander.  My own master.  What other choice did I have?  In the end, of course, it didn't matter.  It came down to Xander and Zuri, and then nothing mattered at all.  It was all over.  The Order was gone, and with it any semblance of order.  No one knew how important Sapo was until it was gone.

Most of all, me.  I grew old.  Yeah, somehow I survived.  I guess I wasn't important enough, or was too big a coward.  Didn't do nearly enough.  Like everyone else. 

So what can I say?  Except, I'm sorry.

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

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.

A to Z Lies in Space - Ulysses

Oh, you wanted to know?  So would everyone.  So would everyone...

The great Ulysses finally speaks!  First of all, you should know that Ulysses isn't my name.  It's actually Karl.  As I understand it, after someone started calling me Ulysses, it kind of stuck, especially with the billions of people who had never heard of me until the legends began.  And as they say, the truth isn't good enough, so go ahead and print the legend.  So that's what's happened to me, my legacy, and my name.  I guess it kind of figures.

A long time ago, I really was just plain, simple Karl, a boy who grew up with his mind in the stars, reading, and watching, every piece of science fiction he could get his hands on.  I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid, believe it or not, but it was an ambition that didn't last past elementary school.  I guess I forgot about it.  Things happen.  I got lost in my own thoughts. 

Then, of course, one day it happened.  I had already built a life for myself, become, reluctantly, an adult, started a family, and so it was incredibly poor timing, but all the same, it happened.  A flash of light, I blacked out, and suddenly I was on an alien planet.  The first person I met was a woman named Marta Goulding, who had been conducting an experiment for the tyrant Reeve.  As I understand it, she was later executed.  Never even had a chance to explain herself, and as far as I know, the experiment was abandoned, forgotten about, except by me.  I got home when I figured out what she'd done.  But that wouldn't be for more than ten years.

In the meantime, I had to keep living.  I escaped mostly because Goulding at first successfully lied about what had happened.  She was an elderly woman, which even given the differences in our anatomies was obvious enough to me.  She was frail, and probably not long for death anyway.  I could tell she was in pain.  For all I know, she was attempting to preserve her own life.  I miss her dearly, but her death, what I mean to say, was probably a relief to her, regardless of how it came.  I have no doubt that she only reluctantly served Reeve's regime, as did the rest of Zala.  Of course, there are few true innocents in life.  We're all guilty.  We're all complacent.  That's the single thing I took away from my experiences.  I certainly never considered myself a hero.

Yet that's what I became.  As soon as the Sapo Order learned of my existence, it sent its finest agents to, for all intents and purposes, kidnap me.  Alexus had heard of my existence first.  She had better spies than anyone.  I know exactly what she felt about me.  Far from an exotic pet, which is how everyone around her viewed me, and assumed she herself thought, too, she was...fascinated by me.  It was with reluctance and relief that I left her.  Let's just leave it at that.

The Order immediately assigned me to Master Lark, who informed me in no uncertain terms exactly what was at stake, what had happened, and what the Order hoped would happen next.  Lark took responsibility for me mostly because Master Greer thought I was a joke.  Let's be clear about that.  My unique perspective on everything allows me to see things as they really are.  Or so I've certainly told myself, many times, over the years.  Regardless, Lark taught me the arcane arts of the Order, which he said I was uniquely capable of comprehending.  I took that to mean that everything that made me superfluous on Earth, easily dismissed, somehow made me unique and much-coveted on Zala.

So I became a Sapo warrior, and was assigned the one task for which the whole Order had dedicated its existence since the rise of the tyrant Reeve.  Namely, Reeve's destruction.  I thought it was ridiculous.  On that score, I absolutely agree with Greer, and with everyone else, a whole world, that thought it was a joke.  Lark insisted that not only Zala, but the whole universe depended on what I did next, so naturally I took up the challenge, and discovered how weak Reeve really was, and how weak, in turn, the Order itself was, or at least had become.  It's my understanding that this was hardly the high point of civilization, but more like the climax of it.  Doomed for a fall.  Turns out they pinned it on me, because once Reeve was eliminated, everything else collapsed.  Total anarchy.  End of the Order.

So much for the hero.  They did a good job of scrubbing me from history.  The only thing they overlooked was the legend.  But by that time, I was back home, and so none of it mattered to me anymore.  Or so I thought.  Then one day, I had some visitors.  It was much later.  I, too, was old now, just as Goulding had been before me.

They came back.  And suddenly, everything made sense, for the first time in my life.  My family believed in me.  I was a hero.  I was whole again.  I'm not going to lie to you.  I have not had an easy life, and I haven't helped make it any easier (you know what I mean).  But I'm starting to feel as if it was all worth it.

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