[Auxiliary Gunner Grunheide]
What does grass feel like?
The goblin floats in total silence, staring up towards the endless darkness above her head. What does wind feel like? How about stones and dirt? How do they feel beneath one’s feet? How do all of the sensations combine to offer a unique sensory experience at any given moment, depending on where you are in the world?
What is it like to be around others of your own kind?
Isolation is the price that one must pay to reside in the Kingdom of Heaven. It is powerful and a seat of central guidance for the future of the world, but that is its only quality. She finds that heaven is…
— The goblin, floating in space outside on the gun’s open platform, turns her head to the side to stare at a blinking light in an otherwise colorless, metal wall through the visor of her helmet.
Lifeless.
Loveless.
It reminds her more of a tool, manufactured and wielded for a specific task, rather than an organic place. The goblin turns her head, staring at the world below. It looks so large, so massive. It fills her entire field of vision, together with the fingers of her outstretched hand that reach for it, but find nothing apart from void as they close themselves.
Dense forests, rich and green, are painted over its body in great, generous helpings that span between tall, cloud-cutting mountain peaks and thick rivers that run with bountiful plenty to the oceans of the planet. If she were to imagine heaven, that is what it would look like.
Not this.
The speaker in her helmet crackles. “Grun, you gonna manage?” asks a voice. Grunheide sighs, her moment of peaceful silence having been brought to an end. “You’ve already used up half of your oxygen,” says the minotaur, Braungrube.
The goblin is outside, performing some routine maintenance on the gun.
— A weapon which is aimed at her kin, down on the world below, more often than not.
It is a weapon, nested in the empty, cold, heartlessness of this prison and turned down towards the most beautiful thing there is.
What gives the human-god and the machine-god the right to claim the world for humanity alone? What divine decrees, written in the corners of the universe, display their possession of the planet and its future?
There’s none that she can see. They only have the gun. Without the gun, they have no might over the planet whatsoever.
All that there ever is, is talk. The human-god loves to talk — talk right over the images of everything except humanity being vaporized. The one time that humans got anything thrown back at them, he went crazy.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
It’s not fair.
“Grun?” asks the voice on the radio, interrupting her again. “You have ten minutes left.”
She looks over towards the cannon, staring at it for a moment, before turning on her radio. “That’s all I need,” replies the goblin, floating over toward it to get to work.
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[Gottlieb]
What happens when he dies?
Gottlieb stares with his hands folded in front of his face at the world below on the monitor.
Assuming this whole scheme to keep the station running in the long-term works out, as it seems to be doing so far, what happens then? They’ll continue to guide humanity towards a point of prosperity for as long as possible. He’ll eventually get old and die, assuming the passive doses of radiation from space don’t get him first, which they just might. Then there will only be Kai.
Kai is essentially immortal.
— Assuming the AI core, which is Kai’s most important feature, lasts forever and ever.
It might, or it might not. But it stands to reason that Kai will certainly last longer than him no matter what scenario. Kai is intent on keeping the mission going. But the rest of the crew don’t have that priority.
Gottlieb leans back, thinking.
The monsters, the creatures, the things that aren’t human — they’ve been complying so far because he’s established a rapport with them, barring Grunheide who is on the fence. But that will have to keep going for the next year and then the decades after that and then, after he dies, it will have to be kept going by someone else.
He doesn’t just need to plan the long-term survival of the species on the planet; he also needs to plan the long-term survival of the species spirit above the planet.
It would be a big help if the universe would create more humans aboard the station, like it does monsters, but it doesn’t seem willing to oblige at the moment.
Something catches his attention out of the corner of his eyes. Gottlieb turns to look, seeing Blauhausen, flopping around beneath the console on Grunheide’s side. She makes a series of confused noises, working on something in an open panel, and then pops up holding something flat in her hands.
She tilts her head, curiously, staring at it for a while. “This?” asks the ooze, turning it around to show him.
It’s the old photo of his former rendezvous, the former auxiliary gunner before she died in the cosmic shift, Richter. He had forgotten about that. The old photo is vaguely crusty and looks like its been walked on often, before having slid into obscurity beneath the console.
Blauhausen looks at it and then at him, turning the photo around a few times before ultimately pointing at herself. “Mother?” she asks, curiously.
“Ah…” Gottlieb clears his throat and winces with one eye. “Not exactly. I mean… sort of, you know, but… ah. Hmm…”
What happens if he dies?
Gottlieb stares at the old photo, understanding. What will happen is that he, just like her and the photo, will become forgotten, and fairly quickly at that. Humanity will be left to its own devices, and the station as a tool can’t be counted on in the long-long term. In all likelihood, things are as good as they're going to get right now.
He reaches out, taking it from her and looking at it up close.
“I’m back,” says a voice from the side. Gottlieb looks at Grunheide, walking back into the bay.
“Good work,” replies Gottlieb. “We ready to go?” he asks, nodding his head toward the gun.
Grunheide shakes her head, holding up a slime-conduit. “No can do. Conduit’s fried,” she says, shaking it. “Need a new one, but this was our last one.” She shrugs.
“Shit,” mutters Gottlieb, setting the photo down and getting up. Blauhausen takes it again. The man walks over to the goblin, taking the conduit. “Make a new one I guess,” he instructs, looking the piece over.
“I would, but…”
“But what?” asks Gottlieb, looking back down at the goblin.
She points to the side, to the small slime in the flask. “Not enough slime left.”
Gottlieb sighs, setting the broken conduit down and rubbing the bridge of his nose as he takes a minute. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. What he wouldn’t give for everything to just work for one week — hell, three days even. “Okay. I’ll get some food for the slime,” he says, handing it back to her. “You fix this,” he says.
If only he had more hands on deck, human hands in particular…
The man stops in his tracks, thinking for a moment.
Wasn’t that one new room full of ghosts? He narrows his eyes. Ghosts ‘live’ forever, right? But what are the odds of there being a human ghost there to hire?
There’s one way to find out.
But this could be the ticket to his long-term problem.