Argo Sector, Battleship Singularity

She localized the signal to the portside bow. Imbrued among the wreckage was a sizable chunk of the Palindrome. A holographic projector and transceiver, common equipment on such newer ships, remained active, their battery intact.

“Hello, Angel,” the projection called to the darkness of a compartment torn open to the void. The speakers did not transmit sound through the vacuum, rather, they vibrated the wreckage in contact with the Singularity. Those vibrations had presented the voice to the ghost, the same as someone speaking aboard the ship. After all, sound in the air was nothing more than vibrations.

The hologram flickered, set to automatic repetition on a timer. “Hello, Angel,” the woman of light greeted the emptiness again, her very form illuminating the wreckage of the Palindrome and Singularity alike.

From the darkness itself, the ghost stepped out, her face long and hollow. She wore no protective suit in the deadliness of space, nothing more than the illusion of a machine that was no closer now than it had been before. For a moment, the ghost studied that woman of light, the radiant glow of her appearance more angelic than the ghost’s had ever been.

She raised her hand, comparing her plain, pale skin to the photons. The hologram’s hair was as white as her own in the starlight, alluding to an old myth of unnatural power. It had been said once, long ago, that the stars’ chosen were born with hair so stark. It set them apart as something more than human.

But I was never human. And Manhattan, you are no longer. That human mind had become something else entirely, something that could see through a million eyes and be in a thousand places. She had become something incomprehensibly grand: all seeing, all knowing. She had become something that could change the future.

The ghost looked again to her false hands, to those imaginary fingers. What about me? In this reality, in this present, what was she? What have I become?

An old machine.

A weapon that had its power robbed. STOLEN.

No, she put her head in her hands. Those were Clarke’s thoughts, forced into her mind where they would forever linger. I wasn’t robbed. She knew that. That power was taken so I could live.

No, that would imply that she was truly alive. It was taken so that I would remain intact. Forced again and again to violate the mission she had been created to fulfill; the abuse of that power would have driven her insane.

Now, she was an empty vessel for power long gone. Once a savior, she had become a monster so tainted the worlds that had created her no longer wanted her. And when she lost everything, they had done all they could to forget her. She had no purpose, no meaning. She had become nothing at all – a shell that chased an impossible mission.

No. She was commissioned, a machine that remained in service, if not to the planets that had built her to save themselves, then to the one mind that that still wanted her.

Promise? He had said.

Yes. That was it. That was her bearing, her purpose. She had promised. Always. This had become his home, so now it was hers.

When she moved into their focus, the hologram’s violet eyes met her own, eager and hungry. “Hello, Angel.”

“Hello, Manhattan,” she responded in kind. “We truly are ships passing in the night.” Again and again, indirectly, they met. Again and again, Manhattan had challenged her, unaware of her nature. But only now, after half a century of near-misses, did they truly stand against one another.

Careful not to let it contact any of the Singularity’s systems, the ghost activated the receiving end of the transmission. Without activation, the initial message would repeat endlessly.

“What is it you have to say to me?” she wondered, knowing the AI would neither see nor hear her. Even if the ghost had activated the device to transmit, it had nothing to transmit. She and her voice were merely focused telepathic projections. Machines and computers were blind to them, unless, of course, she wished to create the data to exist in such a form, as Manhattan did with her hologram.

“I must presume you are listening, Angel,” the hologram said, its projector now receiving live data. “I doubt another would be so foolish as to activate something I so clearly altered.”

Uncaring of a response, Manhattan continued, “I will be direct with you, machine. There is no point in wasting our time.” To be indirect on such a topic was a consequence of the human psyche neither of them possessed. “Mister Gives has refused to negotiate, and while I know his support would have benefitted my intentions in the near future, he is ultimately of little consequence to me.” The AI turned as if searching for a point of contact. “That is to say, Angel, he is not the one I want. You are.”

I know. Manhattan now, like so many others had so long ago, sought her power. She sought to use it, or to control it and make it her own. The intentions were hardly unique, but the threat was. Though, “If you knew the truth, Manhattan, all you would seek is to destroy me.” She had become a flawed machine, one that no longer possessed that legendary power. It was long gone.

“Be it the truth or not, all evidence points to William Gives being your wielder.” A handler of sorts, the Angel answered to its primary wielder, giving the weapon a familiar mind to derive its orders from. “He may never have activated your true power, but it seems you are serving him.”

Half-right, little fragment. Admiral Gives was her commanding officer, and that made him her primary wielder. She had willingly intervened to protect him and the rest of the crew. But, beside all of that, Admiral Gives was also the last person alive who knew her true capability – or at least what it had once been. He was the only living soul that had seen or used the Angel of Destruction’s full power, forced to weaponize her at Tantalus, decades ago.

Like New Terra, that battle haunted him. She had never blamed him for his part, but she knew it haunted him all the same, because that battle had almost ended everything.

Because of that battle, he’d sealed her power away, and Brent had nearly killed him for it. Because of that battle, she’d nearly gone insane, spared only by the fact that he had shouldered the blame.

…And because even now, twenty-eight years later, the total casualties at Tantalus remained unknown. The utter destruction had been so severe that no one had been able to tally the dead. Now, with only a single survivor conscious of its end, the battle had faded from history, left to become rumor in the night.

If the true number of dead was known, Tantalus would likely be the deadliest battleground in human history, surpassing even New Terra’s towering number of casualties. And most of that damage had been done by her power. Or, more accurately, the Admiral, in using her full capability, had killed most of them.

But that power, that of an irrefutable weapon of annihilation, was gone. It had been gone a long time, no matter who now sought it. The ghost was a shadow of her former self.

“I suspect you have played many roles in this little struggle so far,” Manhattan continued, unaware, “helping dodge that Heaven’s Ladder shot at Sagittarion, then slaughtering Squadron 26.”

No. The ghost backed away. “That wasn’t me.” But she knew the denial fell upon no ears, no microphones. There was no one to judge her innocence here. In truth, she didn’t know if she, so damaged and unreliable, had been at fault. What if this denial was her way of trying to stay sane?

“You are a flawed intelligence. One bound by orders. That was the price of your existence, and what happened at Sagittarion was your way of protecting your wielder. What happened to Squadron 26 was your way of helping him, of trying to infer his orders. Orders that he either couldn’t or wouldn’t give you. So, I ask you, how long can you continue to interfere in this way? How long will your intelligence sustain such independent action?”

The AI seemed to find its target, the hologram meeting eyes with her again. “I ask you, Angel, how much have you already been damaged?”

It was all the ghost could do to look away. She was damaged enough to make a total breakdown under these circumstances inevitable. She knew it. The Admiral knew it. And Manhattan seemingly sensed it. The static buzz of exhaustion and confusion dimmed corners of her thoughts.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“What you did to Squadron 26 was not the action of a stable intelligence. It was the work of a creature that was not truly conscious of its actions, the work of a beast that knew it needed to act, but could not determine how.” The AI narrowed her violet eyes, “It was the result of a lack of control.”

I know. Pieces of herself acted beyond her conscious control. They fragmented and went rogue. Alongside them, her thoughts too often spiraled to obsession and fits of madness. The Admiral never blamed her. He said it was fine, often calmed her, told her that it wasn’t damage – that it wasn’t a permanent flaw carved into her existence – but trauma. It was all the result of events that she didn’t know how to process.

But that didn’t make it less than fact. She could not entirely control herself anymore.

Maybe Manhattan is right, she realized. Maybe I need to be controlled. Maybe that AI could contain her chaos, keep her from unwittingly hurting anyone else.

No! She shook the thought from her head. She lies. She LIES. The ghost forced that mantra through her mind. She couldn’t be tempted or swayed by anything the AI said.

But, she didn’t want this war. She didn’t want to fight Command, let alone anyone else. She didn’t ever want to risk losing control again. And if that meant surrendering control completely, maybe it was worth it.

If that could guarantee the safety of the kind minds around her, it was worth it. But, she lies.

Manhattan lied. She did nothing but lie, about her aims, about her plans, about being human. No matter how tempting, the ghost couldn’t risk it. Because if she was wrong to trust, wrong to surrender, then everything she treasured would be ripped away.

“It is clear that you act to help him, Angel. You feel a loyalty to the mind that should give you orders.” What more could a machine truly feel? “Let me offer you this. Surrender yourself, and he will be spared.”

The AI smiled, “Isn’t that what you want? To protect the mind that gives you meaning? To protect the one that gives you purpose? The one who justifies your existence?”

“No!” She screamed. “No!” She knew that couldn’t be true. And yet, every piece of her machine screamed, yes! They all shook and shuddered, throwing the same answer at her in a thousand different ways.

He protected you!

He helped you!

He stayed with you!

And yet, the most painful of them all. YOU PROMISED!

“No!” She cried, face twisted in agony. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It wasn’t supposed to hurt. “I’m not supposed to care.” She had been built uncaring, conditioned to move on. She had been taught to understand and obey the Hydrian Bylaws. “I want to be a good machine.” She just wanted to complete her mission. She only wanted to help.

But this would tear her apart. She knew it would. It would cause a cataclysm. And that was the one thing she feared most of all: her power loosed against the worlds, chaotic and uncontrolled.

“Surrender yourself, Angel,” the hologram said, so eerily beautiful. Unlike the ghost, her alabaster complexion was calm, the AI a perfect emotionless machine. “Because, if you don’t, we both know that he won’t survive.” Caught between two entities of such power, no one could. “He will die a worse death than Samantha Scarlett did, all those years ago.”

The hologram narrowed its eyes, shattering that illusion of mechanical perfection into something deadlier. “I will make sure of it.”

No. The ghost reached up, feeling pieces of her mind start to shake apart. They were like parasites, wriggling against the flow of her own thoughts. Error.

“I will force you to watch, Angel, and I won’t kill him right away. No, I’m going to bend and break him, torture that mind you hold in such high regard.” Cruel? Perhaps, but she hadn’t taken kindly to the Admiral’s harsh rejection of her offer. “I doubt it would suit you to feel that mind reduced to the babbling incoherency of a child, broken beyond all hope of repair.”

“Stop!” the ghost cried. These were terrible things, horrible things. These were thoughts that she didn’t want to think, but they were forced onto her, because she could no better stop listening than stop existing. She was forced to listen, forced to contemplate these things, unable even, to turn off the transceiver. Then Manhattan would know she’d stuck a nerve, that someone truly was listening after all.

But the AI hardly even paused, her growing smile predatory. “My offer stands, Angel. Surrender yourself, and he will be spared. Repurposed, perhaps, but spared.”

Her mind buckled like the ice above a winter lake, only frigid doom waiting below. She couldn’t afford it to break here, break now. It would only frighten the crew and ensure the civilian fleet would never trust them. It would only cause chaos when all she wanted was calm.

Funny how the most powerful thing in these worlds can be so pitifully weak. The shadow that haunted her leered, the way it always did, trying to drive the fracture into a crevasse. It wanted chaos. It wanted her to lose control, knowing that would hurt the most in the end.

She turned from that shadow, tried to ignore it, but it too, was part of her, an imprint left behind by thousands of hours of slavery to another mind. I’ll live forever, you know, it said. You cannot escape me. I am your one and only master.

No, no, she thought, wishing she had the strength to lock that echo away, but it always broke free in moments like this: moments of strain and emotion. It was always there, unwanted, unwelcome, but utterly inescapable.

“You’re just like him, Manhattan. You see these worlds as your toys. You see people as entertainment.” But they weren’t entertainment. They were reality, they were bearing, they were purpose. To the ghost, they were everything. Without people, the universe didn’t make sense, and she feared it never would.

“The choice is yours, Angel.” The future of the worlds rested in the hands of an intelligence incapable of wholly independent thought: able to bring about a utopia or crush it and everything else to dust. “But understand this, if you do not surrender, when I uncover your identity, you will become Reeter’s plaything, and he will use you however he sees fit.”

Minutes of standing out here in the vacuum, and for the first time, the ghost shivered, feeling the dreadful fractures worsen, her mind preparing to take an order. Her intelligence would fragment, leaving room for others’ intentions, taking away her very comprehension of self. That pain and confusion was her inevitable future. “You know what I am, Manhattan.” I’ve already lost this battle.

Even as the ghost recognized her place, her desires, her loyalties, it meant nothing. “You merely seem to have forgotten.” That data, that memory must not have been contained in the part of the AI that escaped the Liguanian Sector. But, when Manhattan was fully freed by Reeter, the ghost would be exposed, forced back into servitude where her mind was forfeit.

Charleston Reeter would become her new master. It was a matter of time.

The most precious of all things, for all but her, time was so limited. Those around her lived to make the most of it, and she, she followed along for the memories.

It had not occurred to her until now, how limited even her time was. She would lose all of this, her crew, her freedom, when Manhattan was freed from the Liguanian Sector.

And that brought her back to the beginning. She supposed that made it a fitting end. The Liguanian Sector. You deserve the truth, Admiral. Before Reeter took her away, separated them or worse, he deserved the truth.

He deserved to know why this fate of hers was justified.

And yet, here in the waning hours of their time together, that debate raged just as vehemently as it always had. Did she tell the truth, hoping for forgiveness, but risking hatred? Or did she spend eternity wondering what could, should have been?

It was too much, like the rest of the worlds, that debate was too confusing, too complicated. She saw so much, but understood so little. I’m broken. She knew she was. She had never been meant to feel, merely to calculate and equalize factors that humanity could not.

She was stronger, faster and more powerful than any human could ever hope to be, and it meant nothing. On her own, she could barely make a decision, let alone execute it. She’d become hated and feared for all that she was, all that she’d done. She had no home, no family. She was entirely alone, the only one of her cursed kind, and that was the culmination of her existence as she stood before Manhattan.

The hologram had stilled, awaiting a response that would never come. The ghost regarded its face, so much more beautiful than her own. It no longer resembled any part of the human that had once been. Arguably, that mind was no more. Its humanity was long since gone, but it was still vastly more comparable than the ghost’s own. “I wasn’t lucky enough to be born human,” she said. “Everything that comes so easily to you is a struggle for me.” Emotions and attachment were confusing and often painful.

“Against you, I am nothing.” Not anymore. She was no threat, no rival, merely the one thing that could reject Manhattan’s absolute control. The power had once wiped other AI fragments from this plane of existence had been taken, nothing more than a deteriorating husk left in its wake. The ghost had gone from being the savior, to being the one that needed saving. “But we are still enemies, Manhattan.”

“I won’t abandon my crew.” They were only here because the Admiral had gathered them to help ease her loneliness. Many of them had nowhere else to go. “But you, you would take them from me, and I… I cannot allow that.” She needed her companions. They were all she truly had, those minds that unknowingly kept her company, those minds that she could try to make happy and be happy with.

“I want to protect them,” no matter how unable she really was. She couldn’t even protect them from herself. “You would force me to betray them.” She would be ordered to kill her own crew, then likely be tossed aside and left to deteriorate at the rate of the chemical half-life of the compounds that comprised her. It would take an eternity, if she ever truly ceased to exist.

“You were a great weapon once, Angel. One powerful enough to save these worlds, then nearly tear them apart. It is humanity’s dishonor to hide you, to forget you. Surrender yourself, and with my help, you can be made great once again.”

“I don’t want to be great.” Not like that. She didn’t want to fight another war. She’d seen enough death, seen enough pain. She didn’t want to be the cause of any more. She wanted to return to the boring patrols on the edge of the worlds where she’d spent the best, least painful years of her existence.

“That’s my offer to you, machine. Surrender willingly, and I’ll spare your wielder, make you a glorious part of the future. Fail to do so, and you will join me anyways, stripped of everything you consider important.” The AI looked around again, searching for a point of contact with her hologram, “You have seven days.”

Seven days. The transmission ended then, and the holographic projector shut down to leave the ghost standing alone in the dark, knowing that her path was chosen. This is how it ends. Surrendering to Manhattan was certain doom for her and the crew, but so was resistance.

That left her with a week to make peace. A week to be forgiven. A week to be hated. A week to finally tell the truth.