The Perfect Run

Chapter 111

« December 12th, 1992, Antarctica. Eva Fabre loved watching the night sky.

She couldn’t see the stars in Paris, but Antarctica had no light pollution to hide them. Auroras danced in the heavens, while the Milky Way shone brightly above her head. The night seemed alive and full of wonders, the darkness of space overwhelmed by islands of light.

Was there ever a more beautiful sight?

Eva had wanted to become an astronaut when she was a child. But being born in the wrong place at the wrong time, her chances had been dim from the start. Instead, she became a geneticist, and eventually rose through the ranks to become the head scientist of Station Orpheon. Instead of landing on the moon, she led a large team in studying dangerous plagues.

The French government had chosen Antarctica as the site’s location for a few reasons. Mostly, it was meant to avoid dangerous containment breaches, but also to study ancient viruses frozen beneath the ice. Some of them could devastate the Earth if unleashed, and Eva’s superior wanted to keep an edge in the field of bioweapons. The USSR’s collapse left the future uncertain.

Some would have resented working on weapons of mass destruction, but Eva slept soundly at night. International relationships were based on force, and strength derived from technological superiority. For her country to survive, it needed to stay ahead of the competition by any means necessary. Maybe her work would kill millions one day, maybe not. Though she would rather see nukes stay in their silos, they would come in handy if doomsday ever came.

Eva was paid to do a dirty job, but it was a necessary one.

Standing near her special 4x4, Eva sensed the cold creeping into her suit. Though she wore heavy clothing, including a parka, goggles, mittens, and a balaclava, Antarctica was Earth’s harshest environment. No one was truly safe from it, and she was kilometers away from the station, surrounded only by ice.

But Eva didn’t care. The night sky's sight warmed her already.

She knew aliens existed above. The samples she found in Antarctica had all but convinced her that life came from space, in the form of primordial viruses and bacteria. What kind of strange and wonderful creature inhabited the stars above her head?

She hoped to live long enough to find out.

“Pierre to Eva?” Her assistant called her through the intercom. “Pierre to Eva?” “I'm here,” she replied. “Just stargazing.”

“Oh, good, | was getting worried.”

Of course he was. Pierre was anxious by nature, and he always advised Eva not to go out alone. Truth be told, the scientist enjoyed these quiet moments of solitude she couldn't find in the communal station. Eva didn’t particularly feel close to anyone, and didn’t want to. Her work was her life.

“You should go back though,” Pierre said. “We’re picking up abnormal electromagnetic activity in your area.”

“Probably the auroras,” Eva replied absentmindedly. Now that she said that, their colors seemed to change from green to a light shade of violet. “I'll be back soon.”

“Sorry | did...” Pierre’s voice turned into a radio static. “Eva...” “Pierre?” Eva called out, her communicator starting to bug out. “Pierre, can you hear me?” No answer but a static.

“Pierre?” Eva asked again, only to squint through her goggles. The auroras above her head had grown brighter, streaks of purple light illuminating the frozen wasteland. The static turned into a droning sound, almost ear-piercing. “Pierre?”

Another voice answered, but with a bestial roar rather than a word.

The ground shook beneath Eva’s feet, small rifts and cracks forming into the ice. The heavens brightened further, until the night turned into a purple day.

Realizing something was wrong, Eva immediately jumped back inside her vehicle and smashed the accelerator. The strong, reinforced wheels dashed on the snow, while the scientist immediately drove back towards Station Orpheon.

“Pierre? Pierre?” Eva kept calling through the intercom, but all she heard were strange, incomprehensible sounds. “Pierre, are you seeing this?”

Two violet auroras had split the skies in half. Space itself was being ripped apart, like the lids of a giant eye opening. A black spot widening in a sea of purple light, a black hole growing from the heart of a phantom star.

Though a part of her was desperate to get away, Eva ended up peeking through her window to get a better look. Her curiosity overwhelmed her survival instinct.

The black spot had grown to gigantic size, giving the scientist a direct window to look through. Only then did she realize that she was looking at a gate into the very fabric of space-time.

Acolossal, black structure with metal wings crossed the void of space, carried by reactors leaving a crimson streak of light in their wake. The immense machine was as large as a human city, smashing through asteroids like a tank through pebbles.

Aswarm of small red, spearlike machines harassed the giant vessel, violently ramming into its hull like daggers. The giant black machine retaliated with confusing flashes of blue light and red lasers. Orange energy coated the hull at some points, the red vessels shattered when they tried to pierce these areas.

Starships. These were starships. A battle, Eva thought, both awed and horrified by the sight. They’re fighting. Aliens existed, and they were at war.

The giant ship’s hull faced down, towards Eva and Antarctica. By now, most of the red swarm had either been destroyed, or successfully pierced the hull. The rest backed away, as the black starship started crossing the portal and moved ever closer to Eva.

It was about to crash.

“No, no, no!” Eva drove faster than ever before, the car’s engine steaming. Yet though the starship’s fall was slow, it was inevitable. The ground shook beneath her wheels as the kilometer-long cruiser’s bow impacted Antarctica not so far from her location. The earthquake caused her car’s alarm to blare like a dying screech of agony.

“Holy—"

Eva never finished her sentence, as a bright purple flash swallowed her whole, followed by a tide of snow. Ice shards were blown in all directions, cracking her reinforced windshield and tussling the vehicle to the side. Her head smashed against the airbag as her car rolled a dozen times, and the darkness swallowed her.

When Eva regained consciousness, her car had been turned upside down, the roof on the snow, the wheels pointing up. The scientist's vision blurred as her hand reached for the door, and it took her a few minutes to crawl out of her vehicle’s husk. Snow had piled up around it, forcing Eva to dig her way out with her bare mittens. A few drops of frozen water slipped inside her suit, making her wince.

When the scientist managed to stand up outside her vehicle, she wondered if the stars had vanished in the skies. It took her a moment to understand the truth.

An enormous dome overshadowed her.

The starship had crashed into Antarctica’s surface, most of it now buried beneath the snow tide raised by the impact. Its sleek metal surface was as black as a starless night, and eye-like windows seemed to observe her.

Eva gathered her breath. Though she didn’t believe in any God, she had to admit her survival was nothing short of miraculous. If she had chosen another spot to stargaze, the ship would have crushed her 4x4.

After quickly checking if she had any wounds, Eva immediately attempted to contact her base. “Pierre? Pierre, can you hear me?”

No reception. Eva carefully stepped out of the ship’s shadow to look at the skies, and to her shock, the stars were gone. Darkness ruled absolute, besides a few violet lightning bolts. The strange meteorological phenomenon probably interfered with communications.

Eva tried to dig up her car, but quickly realized it was hopeless. The successive shocks had ruined the engine, and she had no idea how to repair it. The emergency radio didn’t work either, so there was no way to contact her base.

She had emergency rations left in the trunk though, alongside the flashlight, a portable heater, shovels, and other basic tools. She could hold out a few days in the hope of being rescued. There was no way her fellow scientists would miss the crash.

Still, doubt gnawed at her each time she looked up. Eva took the flashlight, checked the battery, and toured the crash site. It took her hours.

The ship’s size defied comprehension, and more than half of it was now buried under tons of ice. She remembered seeing wings and reactors during its fall, but only the dome and upper decks remained above ground. Nobody came out to intercept her either.

The scientist eventually found an entrance of some sort, namely advanced blast doors on the alien ship’s right side. A cursory analysis informed her that they were made of strange, orange metals she couldn’t recognize. The crash had breached the gates, leaving a crack large enough for Eva to slip in with some effort.

She almost tried her luck, before deciding it was too dangerous to go alone. She needed to call Station Orpheon, her team, the military. They had to know. Everybody had to know.

Aliens existed. This... this changed everything.

This was the greatest event in mankind’s history since the discovery of fire! This would... this would alter the fate of the world forever! Eva would live long enough to see mankind make first contact with a highly advanced civilization, one clearly capable of interstellar travel!

National rivalries now looked insignificant in the face of such an event. Mankind was only one intelligent species across the stars, and internal divisions no longer mattered. If the aliens willingly shared their technology, then nobody would fight over resources anymore.

Maybe... maybe this discovery would foster universal peace? The creation of a unified human government that wouldn’t need biological weapons? For a moment, Eva found herself dreaming of a world that wouldn’t need her anymore.

But then, she remembered the crash.

This was an advanced civilization’s starship, true, but it was at war. The scientist had no idea how the extraterrestrial survivors, if any, would react to her presence.

Eva decided to leave on foot, to return to Station Orpheon, or at least find a place with better communication. Once she left the strange meteorological phenomenon’s range, she could reorient herself with the stars. Her flashlight was adapted to Antarctica’s frost, but she didn’t have limitless energy either.

The scientist traveled two hours in one direction, only to find herself facing the dome. She walked left and right, north and south. Each time she returned to her starting point. She always went back to the starship.

In the end, Eva had to accept the outlandish truth. Somehow space had folded on itself, creating an endless loop. Either the outside world had been closed to her, perhaps as a defensive measure by the ship... or Earth stopped existing outright. No wonder she couldn’t get a good reception. Unfortunately, this completely dashed her hopes of a quick rescue.

There was only one place to go.

Gathering her breath, Eva approached the blast doors and examined the crack. When the scientist pointed her light through the rift, she couldn’t see much. But there was enough space for her to slip inside, with some effort.

“Is there someone there?” Eva called out through the hole. “Hello? Anyone?” No answer. Even the strange gnarls that she heard before the crash had fallen silent. Eva mustered her courage, put her hands into the crack, and slowly squeezed through, flashlight first.

When she managed to slip to the other side, Eva found herself in what must have been the ship’s airlock. The next set of doors had been ominously torn apart, while icy dust floated in the room. The flashlight revealed strange stains of green slime on the walls, which Eva was careful not to touch. Maybe it was a biological weapon of some sort, or toxic fuel.

At least she could breathe. Either the aliens needed oxygen to live, or the outside atmosphere had slipped inside the vessel. The inside of the ship was cold, but nowhere near so as the Antarctic wasteland.

The scientist walked through the next row of doors, and entered a network of enormous metal corridors. Red crystals embedded in the ceiling provided light, but half of them had shattered. Sometimes, Eva walked more than twenty minutes in one direction with only her flashlight for comfort. Her steps echoed in the cavernous structure, making her nervous.

The ceiling was huge, eight meters tall at least. The walls were from the same black metal as the rest of the ship, so sleek that Eva couldn't find any trace of welding. Occasionally she faced strange featureless doors, each with a different color pattern. Blue, red, orange...

The gates came into pairs, with a colossal door surrounded by two smaller, human-sized ones. Clearly, the ship had been designed to house creatures of various sizes. But Eva didn’t find any biometric lock or computer system. Her attempts to open the gates barehanded yielded no result.

“Hello?” Eva’s voice resonated in the empty vessel, but only an echo answered. “Is someone there?”

What happened in this place? She didn’t have to wait for long to find out. After a long, solitary walk, Eva finally found doors left open.

Or rather, blasted open.

The first room she entered was some kind of docking bay, or so Eva assumed. The hangar was as vast as an airport, and housed a dozen vehicles as big as commercial airliners. The devices reminded Eva of stealth bombers and flying wings, flat triangles with advanced reactors to carry them. All of them showed signs of damage, and carried a strange symbol engraved on their hull; a mark that reminded Eva of a strange fusion between an alien ‘M’ letter and a Greek Omega symbol.

And the smell... a foul stench filled the air, making her nauseous.

“Is someone here?” Eva asked, using her flashlight to search her surroundings. Very few of the red crystals remained active, so she could hardly see anything. “Is some—”

Then, she cast light on an animal's corpse.

The scientist took a step back in surprise and covered her mouth to suppress a scream. Her flashlight wavered, revealing another, gargantuan shape in the darkness. Entrails and weird organs had spilled out of its gut. Her breathing shortening, the frightened Eva waved her flashlight at the ground to get a better look.

Corpses. Corpses everywhere. To her horror, Eva had walked into an open grave.

Aliens had killed each other by the dozens, maybe by the hundreds. All of them wore a strange kind of futuristic armor, combining orange metal plates with circuits of various colors, a visored helmet, and various organic weapons embedded in the arms. But they all came in different sizes and shapes. Some were reptilian humanoids a bit taller than humans, others horned, scaled monsters taller than elephants.

Facing them were piles of scrapped red metal and broken robots. The machines had legs and arms like humanoids, but sharp claws, cannons on the chest, and a single blue crystal eye where the head should have been.

“Fuck...” Eva panted as she examined the corpses. The aliens all had the ‘M’-like symbol engraved on their armor. She found the same mark on some of the robots, but crossed out or savaged. From the way they were positioned, both groups seemed to have fought each other to the last creature standing.

Eva then examined the hangar’s walls, and found the ramming ships piercing through them. Their tips had opened to reveal hatches full of robots, most of them blown to pieces.

It didn’t take long for Eva to figure out what happened. The robots had boarded the larger ship by ramming their smaller vessels into its outer shielding. The inhabitants had put up a fierce resistance, but were overwhelmed through sheer numbers, allowing the attackers to enter the corridors and spread through the ship.

And since the robots wore the same flag as their enemies, but crossed... This looked like a civil war of some kind.

|...” Eva gathered her breath, trying to calm down. What kind of nightmare had she stepped into? Was... was there even a survivor left?

The scientist examined the corpse, in case one of them was... she didn’t know herself. Faking the dead? Only wounded? Her hopes were quickly dashed. The winning side had mercilessly finished off the wounded before moving on.This belongs to NôvelDrama.Org - ©.

However, when Eva made her way across the hanger, she noticed a creature unlike the others. It wore futuristic, orange armor like some of the others, but the body shape... two legs, two arms, broad shoulders, five-fingered hands... the way it was crouched next to a blasted door...

Eva carefully approached the corpse, studying it with her flashlight. Golden circuits linked the modular parts of the armor together, while thick green blood flowed from a large hole in the chest. The scientist could see hints of a dead heart with wires for arteries, and lungs of metal. The armor had been surgically grafted to the skin, alongside cannons on the shoulders and the arms. A golden helmet covered the head. Eva peeked into the green, ‘V’-like visor, and looked into the two white eyes beyond.

Ashiver went down Eva’s spine.

It...

It was a human’s face.

The lower jaw had been replaced with cybernetics, but the eyes and the nose... there was no mistaking it.

Shaken, Eva continued her journey into the ship’s bowels, walking among the dead. By the time she exited the hangar for the rooms beyond, she could hardly take a step without nearly slipping on severed arms, headless corpses, and savaged remains.

Somehow, that was the least disturbing part.

She walked into some kind of lab, where countless specimens floated inside heart-shaped, techno-organic machinery. Cable- veins pumped the containers with green liquid, while maintaining the inhabitants in stasis. Transparent scales allowed Eva to peek at the creatures inside.

Some had been humans once, only to be gutted open, their organs replaced with cybernetic implants. Most however belonged to scaled creatures of various sizes. One was an embryo the size of a dog, another a reptilian humanoid with two eyes. The next container held a larger, leaner variant with four eyes and elongated arms, and the one afterward a spiked, armored monster with five ocular organs. The more eyes the creatures had, the bigger they were, the largest being a colossal cyborg more than eight meters tall.

One exception stuck out from the lot, however.

A blue alien ooze swirled inside a container. When Eva put a hand on the alien glass separating them, the slime manifested tentacles and bumped at its prison’s wall. “At least you’re alive,” Eva whispered. “Whatever you are.”

A bellowing noise echoed to her left. Eva immediately pivoted on herself, pointing her flashlight in a dark corner of the lab.

An alien a little taller than she was crawled in the darkness, its orange armor drenched in green blood. Its left arm was a cannon, the right a bloody, broken stump. An armored lizard tail wavered behind him, while three eyes pleaded at Eva through a cracked visor. The alien let out a pitiful, painful hiss, covering a hole in its chest with its stump. The legs had holes too.

“You're... you're alive?” Eva you idiot, of course it was alive! “Can you understand me?”

The creature appraised Eva carefully, before answering with a sad sound. It then glanced at its wounds, and hissed again.

It couldn’t understand Eva, but it was intelligent enough to establish communication. And it didn’t seem hostile. Just desperate. Though Eva wasn’t a compassionate woman by nature, she couldn’t ignore an animal in pain, especially a sapient one.

“|... I'm sorry, I’m not sure | can help.” Eva carefully approached the creature, to better examine the wounds. “I... | have bandages in my car, but | will need to go back—”

Though the alien’s expression was nothing human, Eva noticed a change in its eyes. Something cold, and cruel. A glint that instantly put her on edge.

Only Eva’s reflexes saved her life, as she dived to her right. The monster raised its cannon as fast as a gunslinger and opened fire, a crimson laser barely missing the scientist. The blast vaporized some of her parka’s hair, and shattered a container behind her.

Eva was too shocked to react, as the monster pointed its cannon at her head again. Instead of unleashing a laser, the weapon let out a click, then another.

No more ammo.

Eva's relief didn’t last long, as the creature let out an angry roar and started crawling towards her. The scientist quickly rose back to her feet and stepped back, horrified. The creature might suffer from terrible wounds, its three eyes glared at the human with hateful malevolence.

“Get away!” Eva snarled, before kicking the alien in its wound. Unable to support its weight on the stump, the monster collapsed visor first, letting out a hiss of pain. More blood flowed out of its wounds, and it soon stopped moving entirely.

It... it tricked me, Eva thought. It tried to lower my guard and kill me. It was dying, and it still tried to kill me.

The realization shook Eva to her core. She had always thought alien civilizations advanced enough for interstellar travel would have moved beyond basic urges. That they would be wise and peaceful.

She had been wrong.

Every ecosystem had its predators, and she had just survived one.

Only then did she remember that the alien had blown up a container.

Eva looked over her shoulder, only to watch a tide of blue slime fall on her.

She tried to scream, but the goo filled her throat first. It swallowed her whole, head first, filling her ears, fusing with her skin, entering her bloodstream. It filled her cells and her marrow, overloaded her nerves with blue light, and stuffed her brain with knowledge. She tried to claw her eyes out as she felt it move behind them, but her hands split in half before she could.

Her whole body, her entire existence, divided like a cell. She remembered kissing an old boyfriend and a girl she had never met, filling out a doctorate in genetics and another in quantum physics, watching night and sky. She was Eva Fabre, and she was someone else. She split again, and again, one woman becoming two then four then more. Her mind splintered as reality fractured around her.

It was a rapturous experience. A fusion between two entities making a whole greater than the sum of its parts, only for it to shatter and create new life.

When the ooze had finally vanished and Eva could see again, she was no longer alone.

It was like staring at a mirror, at many mirrors. Ten other Eva Fabre looked back at the original. Some carried a flashlight, others guns. A few had dyed hair, or tiny scars, or blue parkas rather than a red one.

“Who are you?” Eva asked. Her own lack of emotion surprised her. By this point, facing copies of herself wasn’t even shocking anymore.

“| think I’m you,” a double said. “Another you.” “We all are,” added another doppelganger. Eva frowned, skeptical. “Who won the last presidential election?”

“Jacques Chirac,” one of the doubles said, at the same time others answered with “Raymond Barre,” “De Gaulle again,” “Giscard, unfortunately,” or “Nobody, country’s gone.”

This instantly put Eva on edge. “Frangois Mitterrand won the 1988 presidential elections.” Her doubles all grinned, before saying at the same time, “Not in my France, sister.”

Exploring a derelict ship with clones of herself left a strange feeling in Eva-One at first, but she quickly got used to it. Humans felt safer with numbers on their side, and the scientist was no exception.

“Cellular duplication?” Eva-One asked, as they explored another corridor with the armed copies first. “Clones? Teleportation?”

“Alternate universes?” Eva-7 suggested, glancing at a bisected robot’s remains with a flashlight. They had grown more numerous the farther the group advanced, probably because the defenders fought to the last alien to protect the area.

“| would say quantum echoes,” Eva-3 theorized. This one had a doctorate in physics, so the others listened attentively. “We aren’t truly alternate versions of each other, but possibilities made physical. Living simulations, but so detailed we might as well be real.”

“Which means only the original matters,” Eva-6 said while looking at Eva-One. “We can create more of each other, but if you die we all perish.”

“| hope none of us is suicidal,” Eva-7 japed.

Eva-One had figured as much. Eva-8 had perished when she accidentally triggered an alien corpse’s weapon. Her body had collapsed into blue particles before her head hit the ground, leaving nothing behind.

The same particles flared around her hand each time she touched the ship’s blue doors, causing them to open. “The aliens probably use this energy as a biometric signature,” Eva-3 said. “That should give us partial access to the ship’s key areas.”

“If nobody shoots us,” Eva-4 said grimly, hands on her gun. “Somehow, | don’t think bullets will help much against these things.”

“If any survived,” Eva-One replied. So far only the aliens in stasis had survived the purge, and they hadn't crossed paths with a robot still active. “It seems they massacred each other to the last.”

“Interstellar war? Racial genocide?” Eva-4 asked. “Space piracy? Is that a thing?”

“Pirates steal cargo and avoid conflict if they can,” Eva-6 pointed out. “This slaughter was clearly a war of mutual extermination.” “| don’t know,” Eva-One said, as they reached the broken remains of a large gate. “But | want to find out.”

“We will,” Eva-3 agreed.

The room they walked into had no other entrance or exit. It was the largest they had visited yet, and the strangest. The dome had circuits pulsating with blue energy straining the walls, all joining at a colossal glass tank full of colored liquid in the center. The structure was larger than a medieval castle’s watchtower, and a giant, biomechanical brain as big as a sperm whale floated inside the tank.

The battle there had been the fiercest. A ten-eyed, twelve-meters tall alien with the bulkiest armor seen yet had fought to the death to protect the entrance, with none of the robotic invaders getting anywhere near the brain. The giant destroyed so many of them that the Evas had to climb over a hill of ashes and broken parts to cross the room.

However, that victory had come at a cost. The dead alien had more holes than swiss cheese, and lost all its blood. Most strangely, a severed organic tentacle once linked the monster’s head to the brain, with a dozen others waiting inside liquid pods. Some were thick enough for elephants, some as thin as a finger.

“| think it’s a biological computer overseeing the ship,” Eva-5 said, as she examined a tentacle. The organic device’s end opened to reveal bluish tendrils flaring with blue particles. “Interstellar travel probably needs computations too complex for any mind to oversee.”

“These devices must be neural interfaces,” Eva-2 guessed while checking up on the dead alien. “Perhaps the ship crashed when the attackers managed to slay the pilot?”

“Or the spatial jump was a desperate measure,” Eva-6 said. “There is only one way to find out,” Eva-One replied, as she grabbed a tentacle fit for her head.

Her doubles looked at the original anxiously, as she removed the clothes and goggles protecting her face. “You're sure?” Eva-3 asked. “If it kills you—”

“We'll starve if we can’t find a way out,” Eva-One replied. “Eating alien flesh might prove toxic, and nobody will rescue us inside this spatial anomaly.”

“You just want to learn the truth,” Eva-4 said. “And you’re not even sure you're ready for it.”

“And if you’re me, you will understand why | must try.” Two alien species were at war above their heads, and their conflict had spilled out into Earth. “This is much bigger than us.”

And with these words, Eva-One moved the tentacle to the base of her neck.

She immediately sensed the device sink into her flesh, and tendrils slipped between her bones to reach the spine. An anesthetic substance eased the pain and made her almost sleepy. Her vision turned blue, the giant brain ‘recognizing’ her energy signature.

Show me, Eva thought. And the brain answered.

It didn’t communicate with words, instead, it bombarded her brain with images and pictures. It made her feel the cold of space on her skin, smell the scent of alien worlds and taste the blood of the dead. The ship had ears and eyes, and it remembered.

Eva remembered the day she was put online, around a gas giant with twenty moons. Her scaled makers had repurposed each of them into forges endlessly churning out robots and battleships. She remembered being fed the data of the Day of Enlightenment, when the first Lords of Science discovered the Ultimate Ones and their colored realms. She learned of how the Lords of Science contacted the Ultimate Ones’ formless messengers, who offered the Hegemony knowledge and wisdom.

She watched recordings of priests raising great towers from the earth, to harvest the Flux energy from the higher realms and honor the Ultimate Ones. She was taught of the Hegemony’s creation and its mission, to bring prosperity and peace to an aimless universe.

She sailed across the stars with fleets ten thousand strong, under the command of her scaled makers. She bombed jungle worlds from orbit until they became dust, collapsed the hearts of stars to starve rebellious solar systems of light, and vomited machine armies to enslave the survivors. She fought a hundred battles and won each one.

She remembered docking to great colored towers to recharge. She felt pleasure as Red Flux filled her reactors with energy, as Blue Flux sharpened her mind and Orange Flux repaired the holes in her hull. She looked on with relief as Green Flux cured the living soldiers crewing her, and Yellow Flux raised the dead ones. She remembered the joy of crossing endless distances in a Violet flash, and the White Flux that bound them all together. Only the Black was shunned, for there was no place for Black.

She remembered each of the minds who melded with her to expand her database, and the thousand soldiers and scientists who crewed her across centuries. But most of all, she remembered the countless slaves who died screaming in her laboratories, perishing under the surgical knife so that the Lords of Science might improve their own genetic code. She remembered all those who died for the great glory of the Hegemony.

She remembered the formless messengers voicing their displeasure with the Hegemony, and being ignored. For the Lords of Science had long stopped honoring the Ultimate Ones, and considered themselves the true guides of the universe.

She remembered that inconsequential blue planet, and the apes who inhabited its surface. She watched on as their fire sticks

rebounded off her optical shields, and as the makers bombed them back to the stone age with orbital lasers and asteroids. The small mudball submitted like all the others, its people brought into the Hegemony’s fold. The Lords of Science freed them from

the burden of thought and uplifted them.

She remembered the countless apes brought onboard, surgically enhanced into the empire’s new batch of soldiers. The makers replaced the heart and soul with machinery, and she had watched on with pride as they conquered world after world. The slaves became the new legionnaires, and tributes fueled further campaigns.

She remembered reaching the end of the universe, and the transformation of the last star into a metal sphere. She watched as peace across the stars was achieved, under the Hegemony’s benevolence. She remembered the Lords of Science summoning the Ultimate Ones’ formless messengers to help them ascend, so they might expand the Hegemony’s benevolence to new universes.

She remembered their wish being denied, and the Lords of Science turning against their benefactors. She watched on as the Lords captured the messengers and attempted to make them behave by force.

And she witnessed the Ultimate Ones’ punishment.

She was there when a blue flash spread across the universe, and granted the robot slaves free will and emotions. She witnessed half her crew die from plagues, and supernovas devastating the world-factories. She tried to stamp out rebellions led by the Lords of Science’s dead enemies, and fought armies teleported from ages long past. She struggled against her components turning to dust at random. She remembered the Black Flux, how its chaotic rot spread through the Flux grid and shattered the towers.

She remembered the mixed victories and the disastrous losses. She remembered the failed rebellions put down with force, and the many that succeeded. She witnessed an eons-old civilization collapsing within years.

She remembered the last Lord of Science boarding her and issuing new orders after the core regions fell. To retreat beyond the reaches of their universe with their captive messengers, and rebuild the Hegemony elsewhere, far away from the Ultimate Ones’ gaze.

She remembered her crew modifying her Reality-Drive to escape the barriers between realities. The towers had been a subpar technology, an artificial method to copy the messengers’ powers. The Lord of Science would enslave the formless messengers outright, and make weapons out of them.

She recorded the experiments, as the Lord of Science’s servants studied how to bind the messengers to soldiers. Many of the slaves perished in the attempts, but such was the cost of progress. In time, these hybrids would become the legions of a reborn Hegemony, and allow the scaled makers to surpass even the Ultimate Ones.

There would be peace across the stars once again. But then, she remembered detecting the rebels’ ships and the last Lord of Science ordering an emergency jump.

She tried to flee, but they stabbed her metal womb and massacred her crew. She couldn't compute everything, and the transport calculations went wrong. Everything was wrong! Wrong, wrong, WRONG, SYSTEMIC DAMAGE, PILOT DEAD, EMERGENCY SPACE FOLDING, SYSTEME FAILURE!

Eva-One’s eyes snapped open and her mouth screamed, as the tendrils in her spine quickly retracted. Invisible needles stabbed her all over her body, as she experienced the last pilot's dying throes.

“Hey, hey, you're alright?” Eva-4 quickly held the original as she collapsed into her arms, panting from the strain. “We aren't dissipating, so she isn’t dying,” Eva-3 said, the coldest among them.

Eva-One struggled to follow the discussion. She had lived through centuries in the span of seconds, felt the ship’s pain as its last pilot died while connected to its overmind. It was as if she had experienced the murder herself. It took minutes for the phantom pain to vanish, and for Eva-One to speak coherently. “I know,” she whispered. “I know.”

“So, what are they?” Eva-2 asked while glancing at the dead aliens. “Invaders,” Eva-One replied with dread. “They're invaders.”

Her copies listened intently as she explained the truth to them, before exchanging worried glances. “We have to tell everyone,” Eva-2 said immediately.

“Do we?” Eva-4 asked with a frown.

“Of course we must, what if this isn’t the only ship that escaped into our reality?” Eva-2 pointed out. “What if that vessel sent a distress signal, and help was on the way?”

“Il come from a world where governments bombed us all to death,” Eva-4 replied with a shrug. “I wouldn’t trust them with mankind's fate.”

“Mmm...” Eva-3 pondered her point. “Thing is, if we inform the military, they will hoard that tech for themselves. They won't share.”

“And how would that be a problem?” Eva-5 snickered.

“This is bigger than a single country,” Eva-3 explained. “It’s about mankind. From what | gathered, these creatures came from an alternate reality. What if they have an equivalent in our universe? Alien civilizations are clearly hostile, and more advanced than

us. “We can’t afford to play safe,” Eva-4 nodded. “This goes beyond national rivalries. Our entire species’ survival is at stake.” “Then what do you suggest?” Eva-2 asked with a frown.

“That we take matters into our own hands,” Eva-3 said. “We can create as many of us as we want, all with specific skills. We don’t need outside help to unlock this ship’s secrets. We don’t need anyone but us. If these aliens could use their technology to improve their species, so can we.”

“You suggest that we splice our DNA?” Eva-5 asked, skeptical.

“| suggest that we make gold from lead,” Eva-3 said. “Superhumans from humans. A new species that can survive, even thrive, across the stars.”

“If these reptilians could conquer their entire universe, imagine what we could do with their tech,” Eva-6 argued. “We could colonize the solar system, eradicate disease, and bend reality to our will. We could become the universal master race, not some reptiles.”

“Yeah, if it's us, it will be them,” Eva-4 argued. “We've got to take the lead now, or never. Aliens exist, and they're out to get us.” Eva-One let her doppelgangers debate and try to reach a conclusion.

But in the end, one couldn't argue long with themselves.

It took Eva-One two days to open a hole to the outside world.

The previous pilot’s death and the ship’s structural damage had permanently scarred its organic computer, and Eva-One could only connect to it for a short time before it violently expelled her mind. Each mental dive left her tired, and none of her doubles could take up the duty. They dissipated each time they connected to the central computer, their ethereal existence unable to withstand the psychic strain.

While her copies multiplied and secured the ship, Eva-One kept diving, again, and again, and over again. It would take her years to master all the ship's secrets, and she couldn't access all the overmind’s files. At least she discovered a way to teleport people in and out of the spatial distortion field.

When she appeared next to an ice rift with a violet portal opened behind her, Eva-One looked at the skies. To her immense relief, she could see the stars again.

“Eva?” Pierre called her through her intercom, his voice heavy with panic. “Eva?”

“I'm here,” the scientist replied with a calm, serene voice.

“Thank God!” Pierre let out a sigh of relief. “Oh God, | thought you were dead.”

“Snowstorm nearly disabled my intercom,” Eva-One lied. “How long was | out?”

“A bit more than two hours.”

Two days in, two hours outside. Time itself bent to this alien technology. It was so advanced, it might as well be called magic. “| will need a pick up,” Eva-One said. “My car was damaged.”

“Roger that. Glad to hear your voice again, Eva.”

“When | come back, we will have to talk,” she said. “I have reached an important decision, and | want to know where the team stands on the question.”

“Important decision, huh? You're finally going to let Sebastian take you on a date?” “No.” None of her copies found him interesting either. “This is serious.”

“| guess so, considering your solemn tone. Alright, I'll pick you up, and we can discuss that around a warm cup of coffee away from the snow.”

“Sure.” Eva-One cut the communication and steeled her resolve. She hoped that she could convince her coworkers to follow her lead. If not... if not, she would have to make a hard choice.

It was a dirty job, but a necessary one.

While she waited for the rescue, Eva looked up at the heavens above. The Milky Way was as wondrous as it had ever been, and yet she found no joy in watching it.

Once, Eva loved looking at the bright stars in the night sky.

But now, she could only see the darkness in-between.