My life has been spent traveling from planet to planet, and while I have lived for more than nine hundred years, not three decades were spent on any one planet. Leaving Ghiza VI opened a new world for me. Leaving Naiad closed another one. It began a pattern that I did not know had been set centuries before I was born, at the end of the Fifth Aberrant War. Just as quickly as I saw one place appear in the viewport, I saw it shrink and vanish to nothing in the eternal void. I have never known any other home to rest my head except for the artificial gravity of the Aphelion.

  Looking back, I do not know the right words to describe this. But it is truly a sobering thing to have spent one’s entire life in transit, to always be leaving and never truly arriving. I wish I could say the galaxy was familiar to me, but it was not. I have traveled up and down the spiral arm, and yet I know so little about the worlds I have returned to conquer. I wish I could say I had been a man of the galaxy. But in truth, I am a man of nowhere.

  The word “Sojourn” describes a person who experiences, for whatever reason, the fact that they cannot stay. The person who cannot lay roots, who will never see a second sunrise, who will never feel the same earth under their feet.

  And the strangest thing, the most curious thing, is that this word has become equally synonymous with humans who have lived on the same alien worlds for centuries.

  This record does not have a dedication, for there would be too many precious names to list, and to exclude any of them would be a sin. Instead, let the galaxy remember that my first and final testament is for We who can never leave Sojourn.

  …

  I do not think I truly understood what love meant until I spent that restless night in the Aphelion, aching over the lie that I wanted to tell Ingrish. I wanted to tell her that I had loved her from the beginning—that the incident with the Xurak drone had been a mere accident. But the more I tried to convince myself, the more I felt guilty.

  The worst part of it was that I knew she knew. She was a telepath. There was simply no hiding the fact, as much as I wanted to believe I could conceal otherwise. In fairness to myself, I thought much like an insect did. And honestly, that might’ve fooled many telepaths of the galaxy. But Ingrish?

  What most telepaths don’t realize is that reading thoughts is only skimming the surface of an ocean. Being privy to a person’s monologue is no different than reading an auto-holography. The mistake of those who can open the mind is that they believe thoughts are the individual, when in reality, the narratives with which we entertain ourselves are only a reflection into a deeper self.

  We do not know ourselves the way we think we do. If we did, then we would expect to be the person we think we are. And if we were, then there would’ve been no reason for the child raised by insects to stand dying of guilt in front of his mother’s door. Had I been a Mantza, I would’ve thought nothing of that day. And since I was nothing other than a human, I would’ve rather died than try to pretend any longer.

  So there I stood, in front of a steel retracting door. I did not know that I had to wave my hand over the door sensor to ring the room. Instead, I knocked on the reinforced metal, the steel muffling my banging. It was until my knuckles had split open that Ingrish heard to answer.

  For once, she did not wear the headband around her eyes. She had rushed so quickly to the door that she had forgotten it. I suppose I did not know what to expect. The Milky Way—the ancestral name of our galaxy for those unaware—is home to so many horrors. Tut was not the first nor the last I had experienced. As a child, I had come to learn every corner was a dark one, and every secret concealed something terrible.

  It was to my bafflement then, that Ingrish’s eyes looked entirely normal. They were alien, yes, greenish color with dark pupils. But there was nothing monstrous, nothing that ought to be hidden, like the Dalfaen’s terrible appearance.

  Ingrish yelped when she saw it was me, holding my bloodied hands in the hall. And averting her gaze, she ushered me into the room and went to collect her headband.

  Her quarters were very traditional to the Bakke people. The space was covered in decorated rugs and cloth, much like a tent. Even the viewport was hidden behind thick layers of patterned tapestry. Though I could make out faces and events, depicted in an angular style, I knew none of the context. All I knew is that one wall held a number of sewn portraits with illegible names beneath them. One seemed to be the journey of a particular spacecraft, unlike in design from the Aphelion, as it traveled from world to world. And another was of Amon Russ, saving a young Bakke girl from chains.

  I was captivated by the illustrations that I hardly noticed that my nose burned from incense. Nor did I pay much attention to the lit vases which provided an orange glow to the room. Ingrish took my hand and sat me in the “living room” which was a number of cushions facing each other. For the blood, she quickly ran to a medical kit and wrapped gauze around my injury. And finally, sitting down, she looked at me concerned.

  “What do you want to talk to me about?” she asked.

  I pointed at her headband because I wanted to talk about anything else than what I had actually come here for.

  “Why?”

  Ingrish shifted uncomfortably on the cushion and glanced away. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you know your own eye color?” Ingrish slowly responded.

  “No.”

  “It’s speckled amber on deep blue. And I know you never once thought twice about it—even those times you’ve looked at your own reflection. Don’t worry. That’s normal for the galaxy. Nearly every alien can tell you the color of their eyes but not how they look.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Ingrish took a deep breath. “…In Bakke culture, everything is open to my kind. Every secret is available to us—except the kind of secrets we don’t think to hide. No one pays attention to their own eyes. No one sees their own eyes except if you look for them. And so that is the only privacy available to Bakke. We hide our eyes because that is the only thing we can truly keep to ourselves.”

  “I…” The word caught in my mouth. It was so odd to me because I could not recall precisely when it became familiar to me. I. Not Xeno Urtaph. Not a numerical designation. But… simply I. I realized then that I had become something separated, something other than the group. Of course, as a human, I had always acted and thought like that. There was never a point where I truly inhabited the Mantza way of being. But as I have found, it takes a long time for you to catch up with the truth, and it was not until this conversation that the realization dawned on me.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Just as Ingrish was separated from her own eyes, so was I separated from Ingrish. And with that, all the fear and panic I so desperately tried to dismiss welled up within me again.

  My thoughts raced in my head, I knew that Ingrish knew. And yet, she looked at me as she always did, like she knew nothing of who I really was. Or that, she didn’t care.

  It is truly a harrowing thing, to confess a secret to a telepath. Because even when we’re confessing secrets, especially when we’re confessing secrets, we like to lie. I felt that urge now even though logically I shouldn’t. The Mantza never taught me to lie, but for some reason, it seemed I was a natural liar anyway.

  But I also wasn’t a coward, and so I gulped that temptation down and readied myself.

  I didn’t have the words to properly express any of it, so I just poured it out for her to see in my mind. My decision to run away with the drone. The guilt that came after. My silly attempt to redeem myself with the stasis pod. And finally now, hoping against all hope that she would not hate me for it.

  Ingrish took all this in silence, not so much as moving a muscle. Finally, she spoke, “I forgive you.”

  The way she said those words. She didn’t deny for a moment of how badly I had hurt her. But neither was there any resentment or anger. It was just a warm, tired smile.

  I wish I could say I reacted well.

  For while I had now received what I wanted, I did not know what forgiveness meant. It was unnerving to me just as much as my heart ached for it anyway. The Mantza have no concept of forgiveness, and equally, I had no understanding either.

  Any other child would’ve rushed into their mother’s arms. Any other child would’ve hugged and kissed and cried in relief. Instead, I drew back, running my nails into my arms and staring distantly. Even though I got what I wanted, I could not trap the relief in me and hoard it like some treasure. And although I could leave with those words having been spoken in my head, the more I fell away, the more misery returned.

  “I… don’t understand why.”

  Ingrish was quiet for a moment. “Because you’re my son.”

  I recoiled at the thought. “Why?”

  “Because I love Amon. And Amon loves you.”

  I casted my eyes down. “I don’t want to be. I want the hurt to go away.”

  That was one of the moments I was grateful that Ingrish was a telepath. Because she knew that I said those words intending no dislike for her or Amon—quite the opposite. I no longer wanted to return to the Mantza because I knew there was no putting back what had been lost. There was no escape back into ignorance. But neither did I want this, this ache that seemed to swallow me whole. It was unbearable to me that I had grown to care for someone. No… that was not it. It was unbearable because I knew I could not be this thing called a son, not in the perfect way she must’ve wanted.

  I was afraid because I didn’t want to hurt her again, and I knew I would.

  I felt something wet on my fingertips, and I raised my hand, seeing my fingers were tipped with red. My nails had dug so deeply into my skin that they had drawn blood. Ingrish yelped and rushed over, once again trying to dress the wounds, but I threw my hand up and tried to keep her away, frightened.

  The more Ingrish tried to warmly reassure me, the more sure I knew I wanted to get out of there. She reached forward with a bandage, and I leapt to my feet. Without giving her a chance to communicate another thought, I ran out of the room and into the dim corridors of the Aphelion.

  Our footsteps echoed in the long, quiet halls. There was the ever-present hum of machinery and the creaking of the old vessel. The lights were dimmed for nighttime, only low level floor emitters guided my way. I tried to take a left down a disused corridor. Dodging and weaving between empty cargo canisters, I hoped to outpace Ingrish and find some hidden corner to hide in. But she raced after me, and as much as I tried to run, it was not hard for the Bakke to catch up to the sickly child.

  Just as I ducked into a dusty access tube, Ingrish rushed inside the small space as well. She threw her arms around me, stopping me in my tracks. And although I tried to resist, she hugged all the tighter.

  I squirmed, trying to crawl away into the dark tube. “Let me go!” I cried out.

  “Please, just stop and listen!” Ingrish yelled back, this time with her actual voice. The pained cry made me freeze, and I knew I had done it again. I had hurt her.

  I fell quiet, and I stopped resisting. I was just tired, knowing whatever I did would just cause more of that agony I had come to hate.

  Ingrish held me in her arms. We rested there for a long moment, trying to catch our breaths. She hugged me tighter as she collected her thoughts. “This suffering that you feel… I know it too. But you can’t hurt me, not in a way that would change anything.”

  “Why?” I asked bitterly.

  “Because Amon told me you were family and that’s how it is.”

  I looked blankly into the darkness. And using one of the new words Ingrish taught me, I suddenly found I could voice this emotion that was burning inside me. “I don’t deserve that.”

  “None of us do.”

  “I-I’m sorry.” My voice cracked with grief.

  “I forgive you.”

  Ingrish didn’t try to force more warmth and affection because that would’ve only made me more miserable. Instead, she honestly shared with me the bitterness and heartbreak that she had felt. It was more than I could imagine, though somehow still less than I feared.

  “We all do this to each other at some point. I wish I could take your guilt away and carry it for you.” She sat up and sat me up. Glancing down, she still had the bandages in hand, and she started wrapping them around the wounds on my arms. “But don’t run from that pain—the hurt you feel because you care. That agony means you’re not a Mantza. It means you’re not alone.”

  …

  Amon Russ had decided on a detour before he was to go fight in the Rhodeshi death games. He said he had to meet someone.

  The Aphelion plotted its course for the local star in Naiad’s system. The white-yellow disk in the sky stubbornly grew larger while I heard the ceaseless strain on the ship’s engines as the old bird struggled to fly. The viewports automatically dimmed as the hours passed, allowing me to look directly into the stellar mass in the distance. The roiling sun grew from a small disk until it took up nearly half the sky, and we were still nowhere close to the surface.

  And much like the star, the orbiting Gravitronic Relays were also deceptively massive. At first they seemed like miniature space stations, no bigger as to hold a few vessels. When in reality, they were so large that whole fleets were dwarfed by their massive interiors. I felt a distinct sense of panic when the gigantic skeletal cylinders didn’t stop growing until it was I who was the speck wandering by these gargantuan structures.

  The Relays are constructed with a massive segmented eye at one end, from which five to seven habitation plates are affixed. These plates form the outer shell of the cylinder, extending outward and rotated to provide the artificial gravity. As I looked from the viewport, I saw specks of light much similar to what I saw from the orbit of Naiad, only to realize that the interior surface of these plates housed cities.

  Entering the cylinder, I saw a circular horizon of skyscrapers and glass domes and tram-ways engulf the Aphelion. Countless traffic lanes of ships crisscrossed the mega-structure, with the biggest traveling directly into the eye itself. Much like in Naiad, super-freighters and other titanic vessels took the center lanes whereas smaller vessels passed through nearer to the periphery.

  In the eye, I saw something strange. Around the edges, spectral blue light dipped and fell into the other side, revealing another station that should’ve not been there from the outside. Ingrish told me that Gravitronic Relays use a star’s energy to bend gravity and connect with another Relay in another star system. Ships can then travel along this network, immensely cutting down transit times.

  But as the Aphelion entered a traffic lane to go through the eye, I felt myself strangely upset. This place was so large, so new. It was like a miniature world unto itself. There were so many people. So many ships. And the city below—no, above! How could this place, this great concourse, not be our destination?

  Of course, this Relay was just another one of billions, if not a little on the smaller side. Before I even had time to collect my thoughts, the ship entered the event horizon of the eye, and then we were somewhere else.

  Ingrish pulled me away from the viewport by the second or third time we passed through, and over the course of the day, I lost track of how many Relays we had gone through. But before I went to sleep that night, I took one last look outside. Below, I saw crystalline spires and glimmering orbs lit by a red sun. And like all the others, this Relay ended in yet another ringed eye.

  I marveled at this strange place built by a stranger people before it was gone too.