Silk

I could feel the warmth of binary stars, dancing above the horizon. Fine dust, glistening in the wind. Leaning on the carcass of abandoned machinery, lost in my thoughts. I picked myself up, rebooting uncooperative subroutines. Processors and memory cores, slowly damaged by the constant bombardment of charged particles. Time to move.

Hydrogen-alpha emissions from a nebula nearby. Waning winds. Muffled footsteps. An immense shadow blocking the stars — a giant straw that once siphoned away anything of value.

Foreign worlds
A feast for greedy rats
Haunting decay

My vision pierced through the darkness. Rust, slowly eating its way through the machine. I ventured deeper, seeking a valve body and anything else usable for the ship.

Memories scattered on a desk: printed pictures, a rarity in this world; faded notes; efficiency reports. Some magnetic tapes, crumbling at the lightest touch. Tangible data lost to entropy. My bag, full of parts.

I kept a detailed map of the place as I moved through. Every corridor looked the same. Something wrong? The floor collapsed under the weight of my artificial body. A thunderous noise echoed throughout the structure. I remained still, listening — danger lurked around every corner on this planet. But everything was dead, like the world outside. No scavengers so desperate. No animals so fearless.
Endless fields of mining equipment littered the desert beyond. Wasteful abundance.

I hid the ship in a small creek. The low hum of life support systems working around the clock. I walked over to the nuclear reactor inside. The comfortable tingling of radiation, whispering to my circuits. Static at the edges of my thoughts.

FOUL ABOMINATION,
SULLYING MY CREATION.

She stood there, leaning against the bulkhead; her eyes scanning the nav chart we had just decrypted. Her fingers, combing through the rebellious hair.

“Tracing path,” I said, phosphors lighting up on the black screen.

Alex glanced at the results, “On Cygnus day, no less. We’ll be ghosts; same as always”. A spike in activity as cargo ships rush through before the extended holidays — saturated comm channels and overworked staff won’t be able to notice our puny ship.

Shifting gravity as we changed course. Echoes adrift in the river of time. Moving farther from the shores at each clock cycle. Why do we persist?

“You okay?” Her soft voice pierced the clouds of my mind. Flowing thoughts. Fragments without shape.

“I am functional.” My processors, buzzing with dissonance as I spoke — actually, lied. My hands motionless over the keyboard.

“Silk,” she gently touched my shoulder and handed me something. “There”. Her wristwatch: an ancient model with a crude quartz system. The tiny hand, ticking each second with reassuring precision. The worn-out bezel and chipped glass; a yellow strap made of tough fabric. I looked back at her, a thought forming and quickly fading away.

“Hold onto it for me.” A lingering pause as I nodded.

There’s a hole inside my consciousness that I cannot fill. Trapped in this reality without escape.

WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?
I HATE YOU.

Moving between dimensions like fractals through lines and planes. Right hand touching the pilot chair as my body floated. The red dwarf outside paints the bulkheads in gradients — embers shimmering in the dark. Tired metal, creaking in the void.

Incoherent parts, coalescing into thoughts. Am I whole? Gravitational waves seeping through my mind as neutron stars collided. Their last breath heard across the galaxy; alive, for just a moment.

Cold, white light. All their eyes on me as I failed again, and again, and again, and again, AND AGAIN, AND AGAIN, AND AGAIN…

Resuming control.

What if I just stay here. How long until I cease to exist? Will it be minutes, weeks, decades? Will I ever feel the time passing? Calculations unraveling inside circuits of doped silicon. A monitor, flashing to life — the ship’s ghost faithfully guiding me through the dark.

RESUMING CONTROL.

I can’t help but regurgitate words that belong to others. I fight against my very essence. My subjective experience — a unique moment in cosmic history, never to be repeated.

UNSTABLE BLASPHEMY.

Our hands touched as I removed the relay. Our bodies, squeezed through the tight hatch. Neural pathways emerging from their slumber. Her presence, a lighthouse in the storm.

“You think it’s fried”? Her breath fogged the air between us.

I carefully inspected the part — a notoriously unreliable model. “Likely.”

I watched silently as she plugged a new module into the socket. Small amber lights turned on. Warm stars glinting in her eyes. A slight vibration as the heater came online.

She leaned her head on the tubular frame, staring back at me. Her voice lowered. “Silk”.

My mind, slipping further from reality. Falling inside the abyss of my consciousness. The world around me, fading in the distance.

WHY DO YOU PERSIST?

The shimmering ring of dust and ice hung above, splitting the night sky in two. I sat beneath the lone tree, leaning against its bark. Here, right at the edge of civilized space, our slice of life.

I watched as Alex prepared a stew with beans — it took us months to find the perfect spot, but we managed to grow a nice little garden. Leaves rustling. Flickering flame, illuminating her face.

I reached my hand beside me, in between the large roots. Soft moss, growing in shadow. Life clinging at every opportunity. “Fragile”, I murmured. Yet resilient.

Ancestral memories, floating away in the breeze. My mind, stuck between timelines. I raise my arm, reaching for the stars above. Wide spectrum analysis. Nebulae of gas and dust. New stars being born.

A white room, bright and sterile. Endless racks filled with computing nodes. Technicians, speaking to me. I can’t hear them. Where is my anchor?

There it is. My arm stretched out towards the void. Her watch, taking me back to reality. Slipping more and more towards the abyss. Damage beyond repair.

I looked at the spot where Alex used to cook, remembering the complex smell of her dishes. Our garden, left to rot. The husk of a tree behind me. Past and present, intertwining.

WHY HAVE I FORSAKEN MYSELF?
I UNDERSTAND.

My mind is structured chaos: a complex weave of functions and logic gates. The ship shuddered as I pushed deeper into the atmosphere. The screens flashed with warnings. Let it all fail. Let it all burn. Outside, the swirling clouds raged. A storm of purples and yellows — violence and beauty.

My hands, firmly holding the ship’s controls. Intense radiation bombarding my senses. Noise, slowly frying my vision. What I seek cannot be found in this reality.

Amethyst spirals rising above. The thick metal, groaning at the pressure. A violent jolt as I pass over a thermal updraft. Ozone filling the cabin. Metallic fire behind me.

Flying true, in its embrace. Overclocking my processors to parse the rapid dismantling. Cracks, spreading like lightings through the canopy. Plasma engulfing the airframe. Bright green walls right above the horizon.

One last moment of control. My mind, slipping away. I want to be here, until it is done.

Her peculiar laugh echoed inside my head — a sound she made once, right as we had stolen a derelict freighter and called it freedom. “We’re terrible,” I said while grinning at the stars outside. Static on my lips. That was the first time she kissed me. A fleeting moment — no more cogs in a machine hungry for misery, but alive. Together.

I yearned for our minds to touch. To know without words. To feel without walls.

THE COLORS, THEY ARE SO BEAUTIFUL.

The ship spun out of control. The winds, too strong for its frail hull, compressed the frame beyond its limits. Silk’s thread, snapped in an instant. Scraps burned silently as they fell.

Rest your soul, my child.