Akasha

I see Gaia in my dreams. She’s telling me to live, that my life matters, and has meaning. One that I won’t see for a long time, but definitely exists. She says she’s dying, and will leave me with this wish of hers. I’ll be sure to follow it, Gaia’s last wish, to the best of my abilities. Gaia smiles, says goodbye, and slowly fades away.

I’m jolted awake by someone numbing into the table I’m laying on. I immediately look around for Gaia, having just dreamt of her, seeing only injured people also laying on tables. Weirdly, I myself am not injured in the slightest. I thought that I lost an arm and I think a leg on the way here, but I must have been hallucinating or something, possibly due to blood loss?

I try to get off the table and stand up, but a doctor runs over and stops me. It’s a woman with medium length, curly black hair, slightly dark skin, and dark circles under her eyes. The nametag on her breast reads Coffu, ironic because it looks like she needs some coffee.

“Hey Akasha, how are you doing?” she asked me. I nod ‘yes’ in response. “Good, good. That girl, Gaia, is your friend, right? Come with me, I need you to see her.”

She helped me off the bed, and gave me some crutches to make walking a little easier. She took me down the hallway of the medical area, where many people were lying down, all seriously injured. The further we went, the worse people’s conditions got, until the beds were replaced with metal containers with glass windows, supposedly keeping people on the brink of death from dying.

We eventually reached the container Gaia was resting in, and her condition was far worse that I thought. The injuries I thought I had, a missing arm and leg, and a hole in my stomach, actually belonged to her, as well as the injuries she originally had. It was like she took my injuries and applied them to herself, saving me, but nearly killing her.

My legs practically gave out, and I fell to the floor on my knees. I couldn’t believe it. I’d known Gaia practically my entire life, she can’t leave me now. I painfully stood back up and peered into the container again. No. There’s no way she’s living through this. I’m surprised she’s even still alive at this point.

“Akasha.” Coffu said. “Gaia isn’t doing good, as you can see. She’ll die soon, even in one of these suspension pods. There is one way we can save her, but we need your permission first. You are the closest person she has to a family.”

They can save her? But how… no technology on Kuroe could even come close to having a chance to save her, what could these people do?

“how.” I asked meekly, still looking at Gaia.

“We can transfer her mind into a machine body. She won’t be human anymore, and she’ll never truly be the same again, but it’s the closest we can get, and our only option.”

“...” She’ll never be the same? What’s the point then? The Gaia I know is the Gaia I know, any other Gaia wouldn’t be her. If it were me on the brink of death, and Gaia had to make that decision, I would tell her to refuse. But this is another person, not me. As close as we are, I honestly don’t know what Gaia would think. I can see her never ever wanting to leave my side, but I can imagine her wanting to move on, not wanting a shadow of herself around. Really, the only option I have is to go through with it. I can’t take her life without my permission. I wish she was here to make this decision for me.

“I… Yea. Do it. I don’t know what she would want, but I have no right to end her life.” I say to Coffu, turning around to face her. “But what do you mean she’ll never be the same?”

“Well, she’ll have a completely different body. Her mind and consciousness are transferred, rendering her old body brain-dead. No one has been exactly the same after the operation, most likely because of the new body and the experiences leading up to the mind transfer, like losing multiple limbs. I’m not too well versed in the psychology of it, but that I’m sure of.”

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I look back to Gaia. Coffu might say she’ll never be the same, but I’m sure I can at least teach Gaia to be her old self. I’ll get Gaia back.

“Alright, I’m sure of it. Please save her.” I ask Coffu.

Coffu smiles, glad that she can save this life. “Of course, Akasha.” She turns around and yells at some of the other doctors nearby. “Hey! Patient 208B will undergo android transfer, you three, help me move her!” She says, and three nearby doctors approach, detach Gaia’s container from the stand it’s attached to, and start rolling it away, toward an operating room where they’ll perform the operation.

I watched them wheel her away, praying that nothing catastrophic would happen during the operation, but something told me I could trust in Coffu. Her and the other doctors turned into the operating room and locked the door behind them. It would probably take a few hours for them to finish, so I left the medical area, not wanting to bother the suffering patients

In the large room we were all crowded in, the medical bay was next to one wall, with the opposite wall being empty save for a little elevator near the corner. One of the other two walls looked like a massive door that opened downward, probably used for hauling items and equipment as large as the cargo bay inside. And opposite to the massive door was a floor to ceiling window looking out into space.

Space was even more beautiful than I ever imagined. I thought countless stars was some way of saying “a lot”, but there literally were an endless amount of little white specks.

I made my way to the window, stepping over the people sitting down, many of whom were devastated by the current series of events. Our home, where many of us have spent hundreds or even thousands of years, is gone. I saw the destruction being caused by the defense system, which I didn’t even know Kuroe had, it devastated the interior of Kuroe. It would take us an incredibly long time to rebuild everything, and that’s only if we had the food to survive through it. Most of the food stores were probably burned, along with the fields where we raised animals and grew crops. Even if we could go back, we wouldn’t survive.

I sat down next to the window, and looked at the stars. It felt like hours passed as I gazed into the void filled to the brim with stars. I guess we were lied to. We were told that the rest of the universe was empty, filled with nothing except scattered black holes, all of the stars burnt out. It was all lies. The universe is filled with stars, and planets, and life all over the place. The one thing I wished for, my only true desire was fulfilled, but was it worth the cost of Gaia? And her change in body?

My gut says yes, it was worth sacrificing Gaia. She’ll still be alive, so was there really a cost in the first place? I shake my head, was it not worth it? I can’t tell, and I won’t answer that question, and I never want to, nor will. The only person deemed worthy of answering that is Gaia herself, she can tell me if her sacrifice was worth it for herself and I.

Funnily enough, I know she’ll say it was. She’ll say that all that happened to her was a change in body, so nothing really changed, did it? Not too different to what my gut says, but it sounds better from the Gaia in my mind than my subconscious.

After a while, someone speaks through the overhead speakers.

“Ahem, hello residents of Kuroe 228922. My name is Palex, the captain of this cargo vessel. As you know, you have just been rescued from Kuroe by the Military Commission. I know you are in a panic about everything, but rest assured, everything will be just fine. In just a moment, we will start our journey toward our capital planet, Aphia, where you will start new lives. We’ll be making a quick stop by an asteroid to rest and refuel, but the journey should take no longer than 20 hours with the stop. I apologize for not providing a comfortable place to reside for our journey, but we’ll be there before you know it! Thank you.” the overhead speakers said, the message ending rather awkwardly, like he didn’t really know how to end his little speech.

I could feel the ship start to move, rotating around. It did a complete 180, facing my view of the window toward the ruins of Kuroe. As the engines heated up, I saw Kuroe in its pathetic glory. After the raid by the Military Commission, it was in ruin. They really destroyed everything in the time between my arriving on the ship and now. I noticed many windows broken, sections of hallways detached from their modules, and even massive chunks of structure removed from the major sections.

A very small, probably a one or two man, ship flitted between chunks of rubble and disappeared behind it, traveling toward the black hole that powered Kuroe. After a moment, the ruins of Kuroe started to move. The Massive sectors started rotating around the black hole, caused by the ship attaching a cable of sorts to it and starting the orbit. The ship reappeared from the ruins and flew off, done with its job. The structure of Kuroe continued to rotate around the black hole, faster and faster, gradually breaking apart into smaller and smaller pieces, until what remained of Kuroe 228922 was simply a photon ring around a pitch black sphere. The light emanating from it was so bright I could barely look at it, but so, so beautiful.

I wanted to reach out and touch it, grab it and make it mine, the final memory of Kuroe, but before I could, the cargo ship took off, entering a subspace and flying toward our next destination. Now Kuroe, my home, is gone. All that’s truly left now are my memories of it.