Ad astra per aspera, et ultra ad Logos (Chapter 10)

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Chapter 10.

Nirales woke up feeling surprisingly refreshed. The quarters provided to him were cozier than he had anticipated. At first glance, the dark grey and blue room resembled a prison cell more than an actual living space. However, the place had grown on him, and he couldn’t help but feel at ease there.

He stood up from his bunk and walked over to the claytronic bathing area. He examined the control panel, wondering how to configure its various settings. After a moment of hesitation, he decided it would be better to ask someone how it all worked rather than risk making a mess —or breaking something.

He looked at himself in the mirror. Still wearing his Solaran outfit, he had to admit that the get-up was very well tailored and of high quality. There was still a wine stain on it —a subtle witness to the previous day’s revelries. He then made his way to the wardrobe, where his flight suit swayed, suspended from a simple hanger. He flashed a quick happy pink at the thoughtfulness of his hosts.

Suddenly, there was a knock at his door.

“Nirales, you up?” came Angela’s voice.

“Yes, yes.”

The door opened, and he saw the human smiling at him —a gesture whose meaning he now fully understood. She carried a folded pile of what seemed to be clothes.

“Here, we made these for you. They ought to be more comfortable than your flight suit,” she said, and added after looking at his shirt, “and cleaner than what you’re wearing.”

He took the pile of clothes with both hands, feeling the tough yet smooth texture of the fabric.

“Thank you,” he said with sincere gratitude. “I’ll put them on right away.”

He shut the door and began undressing. The pants were dark brown, with slight ridges running along their length, and several rows of pockets. For his upper body, he had a dark, long-sleeved shirt and a black, multi-pocketed work vest, that he chose not to put on —having nothing to put in the pockets.

When he was done, he opened the door once again, allowing Angela to enter.

“How do I look?”

“Like a true Deathworlder,” she said, smiling and giving him a thumbs-up. “Are they comfortable? Not too tight or loose?”

“No, they actually feel amazing. What’s this fabric made from?”

“I believe it’s an animal fabric, a sort of silk. You’ll have to ask the boys —I’m no expert.”

He looked at himself in the mirror, making his face tentacles stretch and curl up before gathering tightly over his beak. He wobbled his arms, letting them test the elasticity of his new garments. Stroking the fabric with his hands, he once again marveled at its smoothness.

“Feeling hungry?” she asked, breaking his reverie.

“Not much,” he answered. “Frankly, I think I’ve eaten enough for several days.”

Angela gave a hearty chuckle.

“Yeah, country life will do that. Anyway, we have to get you up to speed, so come to the dining area when you’re ready.”

“Sure,” he began, “Hey, do you mind telling me how that thing there works? Yesterday you said it was a cleaning station, but for the life of me I haven’t got a clue how it works, and I would really like to wash these clothes and relieve myself.”

“Absolutely.”

After an in-depth explanation of the claytronic device, he went to the toilet and put his dirty clothes to wash. Afterwards, he went  to the dining table, where everyone except Ivko and Tuyaara was already seated.

“In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming no more —for at last, after a millennia-long slumber, he stirs and awakens, bringing doom upon all who behold his dreadful visage!” Willy’s dramatic proclamation was punctuated with a series of mock terrified screams, followed by his own laughter.

They all looked at him in mild confusion. They knew of the reference, but didn’t know the quote —except Angela, of course, who just slowly shook her head disapprovingly, stifling a laugh.

“Fuck you guys. If Ivko were here, he would have my back,” he said in mock indignation, then added: “Come, sit down, weary traveler. You’ve journeyed far and long, and are thusly in need of rest.”

Nirales just looked at him, a bit confused —not quite grasping the human’s sense of humor—, before taking a seat at the table.

“Here, we had these made especially for you,” said Angela, handing him a wide mug adapted to his facial morphology. “The coffee isn’t as good as the one back home, but it gets the job done.”

Once she poured the dark liquid and added some cream, he tentatively dipped the tips of his tentacles into the hot drink.

She was right —it wasn’t as good.

“Little Lucia explained to me who this Cthulhu fella is. Honestly, I’m just shocked at the idea that eldritch horror is a thing you guys also have. I mean, what are the odds?”

“As always, given the size of the universe, it’s more than zero,” said Willy.

“Fear of the unknown is a pretty common thing. However, it tends to vanish unceremoniously the minute it stops being unknown,” said Neryh, cutting something over at the kitchen counter. “You’d be surprised to know just how mundane the so-called wonders of the universe can be.”

“Now, hold on there, mister,” protested Angela. “Just because something is known doesn’t mean there’s no wonder to be found in it.”

Neryh turned his head toward her, pondering for an instant before shrugging and resuming his work.

“One can always concede that wonder lies in the eyes of the beholder,” he said nonchalantly. “But everything can be known —and thus, not feared.”

“Fear breathes reverence, and reverence in turn breathes deference. For someone who claims to be a navigator, you show pretty little deference to the Current,” said Kana, adding with a cheeky grin, “maybe that’s why you suck at it.”

The crew began hooting at the burn the young Seyalthra gave the noble.

“Wow, okay. That was rude,” he protested, surprised at how deep that cut. “It’s not that I don’t feel reverence for the Current —I’m just not afraid of it. There’s nothing to fear in it.”

“Besides losing oneself, that is,” pointed out Navrek. “That’s the greatest fear all navigators face: dissolving in the sea of consciousness, permanently becoming one with it all,” he added, sipping from his cup.

“I’m not afraid of…” began protesting Neryh, but his arguments were drowned out by everyone’s mockery.

He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He became painfully aware of the fact that the reason he felt so offended was because he knew they were right.

He was afraid of losing himself.

He was afraid of suffering a more permanent form of ego death.

He knew he wasn’t as strong as he wished he was.

“What is this Current you speak of?” inquired Nirales, glowing a light blue in confusion.

His question cut through Neryh’s roasting session, ending it immediately.

“That is one tough question, my friend,” said Angela, sipping from her mug. “I’ll try to explain it as best I can.”

She sat back, took a deep breath, and began thinking of the right way to broach the subject.

“How do you direct a ship that moves faster than light?”

“You can’t move faster than light,” stated Nirales matter-of-factly.

“This is going to be a loooong conversation,” said Willy, sighing in exasperation.

“Now, now. Don’t be rude. There are certain paradigms he isn’t aware of,” said Angela defensively.

“Okay, to cut a very long and convoluted story short: you can travel faster than light by reducing the mass of an object to zero, and travel instantly to any point in the galaxy by reducing the mass even further —until we reach negative mass. This is possible thanks to the zero-point field.”

“I could give you an in-depth explanation of the whole thing, but we’d be here forever. Suffice it to say, thanks to this, we can break the light barrier and travel almost anywhere in the galaxy,” explained Willy.

“Now, back to my previous question. How do you direct a ship moving faster than the speed of light?”

“By… looking…?” said Nirales tentatively.

“How? Your eyes use light, correct? Electromagnetic waves, in any case —right?” continued Angela.

“Yes…”

“So, how can you see if you’re traveling faster than the thing that allows you to see?”

“I don’t know,” he said plainly.

“That’s where the Current comes in. No one really knows its exact nature — or even the nature of its nature. It’s an isomorphic and isotropic field that permeates what we understand as existence, reality, creation. We believe it’s the source of consciousness. Just as our eyes evolved to see light from our suns, our minds evolved to be vessels for it. In the Current, navigators direct ships through a process called Coherent Thought Sequencing, or CTS. They enter a state of deep meditation and ascend into its flow. Once there, they can perceive all the places within Galactic Council space where sentient life exists. They see them as shining stars against a dark background. With the Current, we can only travel to inhabited worlds. Anywhere else, we’re flying blind — we eyeball it. Within GC space that’s easy —we just observe the outlines of negative space— but outside... well, that’s a different story.”

“Think of it as a bounded topological subset,” began Willy, trying to ground the idea in a mathematical framework. “If consciousness is the subset, reality is the full set — a place where all consciousness converges.”

Nirales stared at them in silence —his mind thoroughly blown.

“So, wait. If it’s bounded, how can it also permeate all of existence?”

“We can access the Current from anywhere in the cosmos, but through it, we can only travel wherever sentient life exists. My mathematical analogy was just that — an analogy,” Willy sighed.

“Listen, this is perhaps the single most mind-melting topic there is to know,” Willy paused briefly, searching for a way to convey the idea’s complexity.

“He who truly reaches there,

from himself must fall away;

all he knew before seems bare,

worthless in the light of day.

His true knowledge grows so wide

that he’s left not knowing still,

transcending every skill.”

“Those were the words of an old mystic from our home planet, one of many who saw a glimpse of what lays beyond the Current, of it’s true nature. What I’m trying to explain here is that, not even navigators can truly know what the Current is, because the more they try to know, the less they feel they need to know. They melt away into it, describing it as the most blissful experience a sentient creature can have. It’s heavenly, truly transcendent in ways we can’t even begin to imagine.”

“And now you know why we drink as much as we do,” quipped Navrek.

They all laughed heartily, grateful for the brief respite from the heavy conversation. Nirales simply stared into nothingness, still trying to process it all.

“Wait… so, where does that leave me? Can you even take me back home?”

“Hard to say. Since it’s probably way beyond GC space, finding it might be tricky,” Neryh began to explain. “Even though time doesn’t flow as you’d expect in the Current, it still does here.”

Neryh finished cooking and served a small assortment of appetizers after tidying the cutlery, then sat at the table beside Angela.

“See, even though all consciousness is reflected in the Current —including the ones which lay beyond GC space—, we have no way of telling them apart,” he said, taking one of the small open-faced sandwiches he had just served. “Without a frame of reference, it’s hard to know what is what. On top of that, we have to contend with the time it would take to go through them all. It may feel like no time passes up there, but down here… we would feel it. And there aren’t enough of us to spare —too much risk of losing someone in the process. Plus, we can only perceive consciousness, nothing else. There could be a myriad of unknowns out there. Things we couldn’t even begin to fathom.”

“Or maybe,” said Angela, raising a brow, “there could be some wonders to behold.”

Neryh looked at her and sighed, conceding the point.

“You might be right, Angela. There may indeed be great wonders to behold —as well as great dangers. Ultimately, that’s why we’re here,” he continued, turning to Nirales. “Once your arrival is properly processed by the right authorities, we might be given the task of beginning exploration beyond the border. Who knows…”

“Wait… shouldn’t I introduce myself to your leaders?” Nirales interjected.

The group burst into hearty laughter, as if the very idea were as absurd as breathing in a vacuum.

“No, my friend,” said Navrek, being the first to recover. “We don’t mix with their ilk.”

The oakarat looked around in utter confusion.

“Their ilk?”

A sudden hush fell over the group.

“Hold on,” Angela said, turning to Willy. “You haven’t told him about the whole Garden/Deathworld dynamic? What the hell were you two talking about all night?”

“Well, in our defense, we were very drunk,” said Willy with a cheeky grin, “and it’s poor form to talk politics while having a good time.”

“Dereliction of duty, that’s what that is,” teased Kana.

“I regret nothing. We had a blast —and so did our guest, isn’t that right, Nirales? Come on, back me up, brother.”

Nirales looked at Willy in confusion for a moment before responding.

“I’ll concede that, had you started talking to me about the whole Current thing back then, I might not have lived to tell the tale.”

“Very well, very well. Maybe that wasn’t the best time to get into all that,” admitted Angela. “But now is.”

“So let’s cut right to the chase,” she continued. “As it stands, GC space can be broadly divided into two groups: Gardenworlders, species that have inhabited this part of the galaxy since—well, God knows how long. Honestly, you wouldn’t believe how far back the historical archives go. And then there’s us, the Deathworlders. There are many things we have in common, but what sets us apart is the nature of the planets that birthed us. Back in the day, the GC consensus was that sentient, spacefaring life couldn’t evolve on planets above a certain survivability threshold —factors like high gravity, extreme atmospheric pressure, wild seasonal shifts, hostile flora and fauna, and so on. So, imagine their surprise when about four hundred years ago, a human wannabe navigator, —up to his eyeballs in psychotropics, locked in a sensory deprivation chamber, drifting in a ship in the middle of nowhere— decided to give CTS a try. And he didn’t just dip into the Current… he cannonballed into it with such force that every single navigator in GC space felt it.”

“The guy was later found dead, wearing what some call the Beatific Smile,” explained Willy. “His mind melted into the Current… and died a legend.”

Angela nodded and picked up the thread.

“So, after the GC government heard about this, they did what you’d expect —they came sniffing around. And to their horror, not only were their assumptions about life completely wrong, they were worse than they could’ve imagined. See, growing up on the brutal environment of a Deathworld forces you to evolve differently. Stronger. Faster. More resilient than your average Gardenworlder. But with that physical edge comes a psychological one too —we’re built for toil and strife. The kind of mental anguish any one of us can endure would reduce a Gardenworlder to a gibbering wreck.”

Angela paused her story to take another sip of coffee.

“As you can imagine, when GC scouts came knocking and caught wind of our transmissions, they saw a species of utter monsters. Eldritch abominations. Our entertainment was horrifying, our history was insane, our food was toxic, and our apparent disregard for our own safety and well-being was enough for them to pretty much unilaterally declare war on us.”

“Spoilers, they lost,” chimed in Willy.

“I won’t get into too much detail about the whole affair,” Angela continued, “but suffice it to say, after reverse-engineering one of their ships, a detachment of ten thousand humans —clad in our latest military tech—, jumped straight to the GC capital, Axios Prime, and took the whole place in under nineteen hours.” explained Angela. “And once our boot was firmly planted on their necks, we spared them. We understood their reasoning —some of the prisoners we captured told us as much. So, we struck a deal. We would be their guardians, their protectors, their hound dogs. We'd help build new worlds for them to inhabit. In return, they would leave us alone —free from their politics, their regulations, their taxes, and all the bureaucratic nonsense they still can’t seem to outgrow.”

“Wait, what do you mean by building new worlds?”

“They can’t stand spending long periods in space. Something about their biology—it’s not particularly adaptable or something like that. We, on the other hand, can spend our whole lives in space, provided there’s artificial gravity to keep us alive. A while back, we developed terraforming rings —massive artificial structures designed to customize any world to fit anyone’s specifications. We didn’t need much to make a planet habitable, so building our own planets didn’t take too long —relatively speaking, of course. They still took decades to complete. But as time went on, and the rings improved and multiplied, we started churning out new worlds like crazy.”

“Now, every year a new habitable planet is created for life to flourish in, be it of the Garden, or the Death variety,” explained Navrek.

“So, to circle back to your earlier question—no, we don’t mix with their bureaucrats. That includes their so-called elected officials,” said Neryh, a tinge of venom creeping into his voice. “They may seem soft and harmless to us, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous in their own way. Unlike us, they still cling to the corrupting influence of power that wasn’t earned through competence, but through empty words. Sure, in absolute terms, none of them are as horrific as our worst politicians, but when you scale them up, they look pretty much the same.”

“The evil of political corruption almost cost us our entire species,” said Navrek with a deep sorrow in his voice.

“It wasn’t as bad for us as it was for the nokaltorun,” said Willy, “but it was still bad.”

“We were lucky,” Neryh continued. “We managed to find a delicate balance between aristocracy and democracy that kept us alive long enough to get where we are now.”

“None of us got here unscathed,” Kana began. “We all had to leave millions behind on our respective cradle worlds —those who couldn’t or wouldn’t leave their old grudges behind, and take full responsibility for their own lives…”

“We understood the corruptive nature of power, especially unearned power,” Willy began explaining. “We marched into the galaxy like an invasive species —tougher and stronger than all the rest. If we wanted to break the cycle of death caused by misused power, we needed a permanent solution, one that could endure without degenerating over time. That’s how the Order came to be. Think of it as a quasi-religious military organization, designed to temper our worst impulses and test our mettle on a planet specifically engineered to humble and break us. If we survive and prove our physical strength, we then challenge our intellect by completing an academic discipline aboard the Diadem Scriptorium. Only after all that, can we be deemed worthy of the title Deathworlders. We earn both the power it grants and the responsibility it comes with it.”

“What happens to those who choose not to join the Order?” inquired Nirales, a tinge of dread creeping in his tone.

“You saw it back at Solara,” Angela explained. “We live long, fulfilling, and simple lives —surrounded by family and friends, enjoying the gift of life, in harmony with creation. Life in the Order is reserved for the restless souls, for those who seek more from life.”

“Living in nature, surrounded by our families —building legacies for our descendants and honoring our ancestors— has proven to strike a healthy balance for all Deathworlder species,” added Navrek. “And we owe all of that to humanity.”

Navrek’s voice remained steady, almost neutral —almost. The subtle twitching of his antennae and the slight tension in his side mandibles betrayed an undercurrent of emotion he was struggling to contain.

Willy, sensing something was off, placed a reassuring hand on Navrek’s shoulder, quietly letting him know he was there for him.

“So… how did you all just agree to go along with that?” Nirales asked, shining a confused blue. “I mean, no offense, but living in a rural backwater isn’t exactly my idea of a space-age lifestyle. There had to be some pushback, right?”

They all looked at one another and shrugged.

“Not really,” stated Neryh. “The society you envision is far from the utopia you think it is. Something as tangled and advanced as that would simply perpetuate the same mistakes of the past, probably making them even worse. At one point or another, we’ve all suffered under tyranny’s boot —be it overtly or covertly. We were very aware of the extreme danger posed by hyper-centralized governmental structures, the lack of checks and balances, the ease by which power can coalesce around week and unscrupulous leaders, and that’s without even taking into account the secret societies that rule over those same week leaders from the shadows.”

He leaned forward, tone steady but emphatic.

“So, when we made our first forays into deep space and came across humanity —and learned of their simple, elegant solution to that age-old problem —a hyper decentralized governmental structure, with a series of judges elected timocratically as the highest authority, for the sole purpose of arbitrating in local disputes—, after some initial skepticism, it didn’t take long for us to embrace their way.”

“It also helped that they were very warm and friendly,” added Kana, earning a side hug from Willy.

“Absolutely,” continued Neryh. “They weren’t naïve —they were prepared to defend themselves if necessary— but the first thing they did was offer a hand, followed by a sincere, fraternal embrace. There was also enough room for all of us to spread out, making things like land disputes obsolete.”

“It also helped to realize just how much we had in common,” said Kana. “Not just our general body plan and psychological makeup, but also our turbulent histories… and our shared reverence for nature. Somehow, we all saw it as a source of emotional healing —a kind of spiritual anchor, if that makes sense.”

“Well, there’s also the other thing,” said Navrek, glancing around the table. “I think it’s safe to tell him, right? At this point, he’s going to find out eventually.”

They all waited silently for someone to object, but no one did.

“What other thing?”

“Simply put,” said Angela, as plainly as she could, “we all share the exact same messianic figure.”

Nirales just stared at them, disbelief etched across his alien features.

“We all know him by different names,” continued Angela, her voice calm, almost reverent. “But the stories… they are too similar, the signs too consistent, the symbols too exact. Across distant worlds and alien tongues, it’s always the same figure: the Son of God, the redeemer of sins, the light and the way, the beginning and the end. The one who died by our hands and later resurrected, carrying the promise of salvation and eternal life, and now intercedes for us all before the Almighty.”

A furtive tear, rolled down Angela’s cheek, and she hurried to wipe it away, not wanting to make this moment about her.

“When we all began comparing notes, we realized just how close we truly were, how all the suffering we endured, the losses we took, all the uncertainty… none of it was for nought. Our faith had given us a path of life —narrow and thorny—, that brought us all to this point,” Angela’s words had moved several of those present to the edge of tears —the serendipity of it all being too much to bear.

Nirales just sat in silence, processing the world-shattering revelation his hosts had just dropped on him.

Suddenly Ivko and Tuyaara entered the dining room, carrying a large refrigerated crate.

“Eureka!” bellowed Ivko triumphantly. “We finally got it right!”

Ignoring the solemn mood that had gathered in the room, he dropped the crate on the table, opening the latches to reveal its content.

“Behold, the first batch of vat-grown stakes, curtesy of the Damasco estate!” He looked around, expecting to receive some appreciation —getting instead looks of mild admonishment.

“Read the room, man,” said Willy. “We were just having the Talk with Nirales. You know… the big one.”

“Well, all the more reason to celebrate. Our foreign brother has entered the fold, learned the truth and is now going to have a nice juicy stake to commemorate the occasion. What more can one ask of life?”

The crowd couldn’t help but smile at his enthusiasm… and at the fact that those stakes did in deed, look quite juicy.  

***