Death was not as dreamless as I feared, and it was not as cold. I stood on a sandy beach, waves lapping at my feet, with a great body of water extending past the horizon. It was day, and yet it was also night. A dim sun hung in a tired sky, its red glow fading into black. I looked up, and I saw stars beyond counting. I believed I had had the full measure of the universe when the Aphelion took off from Ghiza VI, and each time I was proven wrong, I thought that revelation would be the last.

  But in truth, it doesn’t end. There’s always a new sky, always a new horizon. It is only those who think they’ve seen everything, done everything, who truly wither and grow old. There is nothing more wretched and hopeless than a cynic, though we all fall to that vice sooner or later. I think that is why children are necessary. They are too young to forget this truth. In them is a world that is still full of wonder.And they remind us, we who have grown cold to this galaxy, that there is still something worth fighting for.

  Even after the Fifth Aberrant War, I am convinced humanity could’ve still come back. As reduced as we were, I must imagine humanity had fared worse sometime in our long history. And we were only damned, when our arrogant race who rushed so quickly to prove their primacy in the cosmos, gave up on their own children.

  Whatever history shall record of the things I have done, I want the galaxy to know I did not make that same mistake.

  I lingered on that beach for a little while. I was unaware at that time that stasis-dreams were made from memories, that what I was experiencing was not the afterlife nor the simulacra of a ship computer. This was in fact Terra, tens of thousands of years ago, after our sun was mortally wounded.

  There was a name that lingered on the edge of my tongue. I did not know it, but I felt it ought to have been spoken anyway. The water lapping at my legs, and even the gristles of sand between my toes seemed to tense, as if the world itself was expecting me to call it out. There was a swell of emotion, from someone somewhere. I would not recognize it for many years, only later realizing it was the sadness of a friend you had long forgotten.

  There was someone else there on that beach. I knew it in my bones, but they were just out of sight. Like someone you could see only from the corner of your eye. I swear I saw a face in the sea-mist, the stasis-dream struggling to bring forward a faint echo of a thought from the distant past. I knew the name so well, and yet not enough to speak it. I could recall how I felt about every syllable and yet the sounds eluded me. I shouted out to whoever was there, hoping they could answer the question. But even as I yelled out the plea, it was too late.

  A cold wind swept up from the ocean. I shivered, and the image faded, this new world blowing away with the invisible breeze. And no sooner had I entered, I awoke again in the stasis bed.

  I sucked in a deep breath of air as the world became real again, and so with it the freezing cold. It was not a slow niggling of discomfort as one often feels as a dream fades away. I was instantly awake and aware, for I was never really asleep to begin with. I was in the stasis bed, the glass and metal lid being lifted upward. Panicking as one does from such a sudden change in sensation, I threw my shivering hands on the lid, trying to push it up faster.

  I clambered towards the widening crack, desperately squeezing myself out. I heard someone shout as foreign hands reached inside, attempting to keep me still. I resisted, squirming as I blindly wished for that warm beach again. I winced as the cold became painful—or perhaps it was from the stiffness of being chemically preserved for the long sleep. Either way, my body cried out against me as I did everything to be free of the pod.

  But the lid finally lifted, and I threw myself onto the floor, scrambling as one does when they did not expect to wake again. My hazy vision was stubborn to clear. My eyes, which had not seen use for three years, hurt just to see. Blinking again and again, I saw dark silhouettes above me, and I cried out in fear.

  “It’s all right! It’s all right!” I heard a familiar voice in my head, and instantly I grew still.

  I looked up, and as my vision gradually began to return, I saw an impossible face staring back down at me as she was trying to help me up.

  Ingrish.

  …

  A blanket was thrown over me, and I was taken to the mess hall. I sat huddled in a chair with my knees drawn close as I watched the woman I had killed preparing us both a meal in the dispensary. I glanced out past the dusty lounge, towards a window and to the passing stars outside. My only explanation was that I did die, and yet why did death now look so much like the Aphelion?

  Ingrish finally came around and set a plate down in front of me, though I scarcely paid attention to the meal.

  “How?” I asked.

  She looked no different than the day she appeared on the Mantza docking port, wearing the same black gown and crimson band around her eyes.

  Ingrish seemed surprised at my question. “Didn’t they tell you? Tut had to put me in stasis so they would have time to fix my organs.”

  My eyes widened as I finally realized what Amon meant by a long sleep.

  “But… But—” I stammered, flashes of images rushing my mind from the syringe of silver fluid to Amon’s crying to the dead alien in the... in the stasis pod.

  Ingrish looked at me in a growing concern as a whirlwind struck my mind. A thousand half-formed thoughts and images came at once, but it was all too much as tears came to my eyes. I had no conception of higher powers nor did I grasp what so many in the galaxy call intervention. However, what I could understand, was that everything I thought had been lost was now made untrue. Everything horrible had been made right again. And although I would never forgive myself, I had been set loose from the consequences.

  I was free, and this time, there were no words for my gratitude.

  “Tut had plenty of time to save me. Death doesn’t set in until the Neuro-Fibrous Circuit is cut.” Ingrish quickly said, perceiving the storm behind my blank expression. I received an image of a complex cellular network that meant absolutely nothing to me.

  Ingrish tried to explain everything, to calm me back down. Taking a cloth and wiping my wet eyes, she said that the silver syringe was a stabilizing fluid, able to prolong the time one could remain “dead” and still be able to be brought back. Though, Ingrish was never dead in the proper sense of the word. Cessation of breath, rampant blood loss, even brain death are all reversible conditions if one has the right tools. In antiquity, these markers were thought to represent death, but we today understand that there is a much finer distinction.

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  Ingrish told me Amon’s hesitance was that the syringe was the last of their supply. And if we found ourselves in such circumstances again, it was dubious whether Tut could bring someone back.

  Although her explanation brought clarity, her nonchalance made me embarrassed I had not realized earlier. And with that embarrassment came a childish anger.

  I suddenly wished I had someone to blame as I felt like I had been lied to. I found I wanted for someone to have had lied to me, for then I would have a right to be angry.

  “But Amon!” I suddenly yelled, picturing the sight of him crying. It was new to me, this sensation of wanting to vindicate myself. I had no idea why it now so mattered to me that I had been manipulated, that there had been a purposeful deception—even though I knew there had been none. No one was at fault except my own ignorance, but I argued anyway.

  Ingrish saw the image in my head, and she knew my objection. Why did he grieve when there was nothing wrong? It didn’t make any sense to me whatsoever. I crossed my arms, expecting her to be stumped. And I admit, I took some vicious pleasure in my victory.

  Ingrish hesitated, setting the damp cloth on the table. Looking back, I don’t think she had ever seen Amon cry before. It was a deep shock to her, and she had to take a moment to compose herself.

  “Amon wasn’t crying for me.” She put together what had happened. “He was crying because he thought his recklessness nearly got you hurt.”

  …

  It’s hard to understand for most species, of how indescribably rare it was for two humans to meet one another. By my time, the only place you could reasonably find humans was Sanctuary—a hidden moon on the edge of known space. Its crumbling cities were not unlike Kaal, except on an icy world orbiting a crimson gas giant.

  But besides that, humans in the galaxy often went centuries without seeing another of our kind. The Ark Ships were all lost or destroyed, and even if we still had the numbers to construct the giant cylinder worlds, we did not have anywhere to go back to. When a Rhodeshi wants to go home, he goes to Rhodon. When a Crustakon wants to go home, he goes to Malakon XII.

  But we had no such place.

  There was practically nowhere in the galaxy where a human could go to be among his own people. Even on the most bustling ecumenopolis, a human always walks alone. And this was a great problem for us, as humans are also some of the most valuable commodities in the galaxy.

  Solar systems might be sold for less. Among those who cared for the history of the galaxy, we were near priceless, desolate and lost children of the most powerful race to ever rule the stars. Of the number that remained in my day, most were slaves, kept as playthings. Others were put in temporal-fields for various menageries and museums. And then there was always the dissection table.

  But what was orders of magnitude more rare than a human, something now thought practically extinct in my race, was a human child. It was very possible I was the last one in the galaxy because while our lifespans are inordinately long, the window for which we can reproduce is only during the first two centuries of our lives.

  As we approached the water-world of Naiad, Amon had a tracker put in me. He gave Ingrish a plasma pistol, something she would now always carry, and gave explicit instructions many times that we would stick to the highest terraces of the massive habitation towers that overlooked the endless waves. I would’ve been told to stay on the ship, but that itself was a danger. Over the centuries, Amon had to deal with many break-ins because someone noticed the Aphelion was a “human” vessel.

  Of course, these occurrences became rarer and rarer over the years as our race dwindled. By my day, it was likely that no one would so much as raise an eye at us. For most aliens, humans were that distant species of the past, the first ones to cross the stars, but now nothing more. It was likely most wouldn’t even recognize me as being a human, instead thinking I belonged to some other, obscure race.

  I don’t think any other race can comprehend what it’s like. Every room on every world is indifferent to us. No matter where we go, there are no familiar faces. There is no place that is warm or comely to us. We are strangers wherever we go, and every language to us is a foreign one. While we can make friends with aliens, and sometimes those bonds could be strong enough to be called family, there is no one who can understand. There is no one who is like us.

  To be a human is to be utterly and totally alone.

  The reason Amon cried was because he thought his decision to board the derelict vessel nearly got me killed, and then he would’ve been alone again.

  …

  Ingrish took me to the viewport as we made our landing. True as I had seen, it was as beautiful as Ingrish had shown me. That was a concept that took me a long time to fully understand. We often think of beauty as a scale, when we say such and such is beautiful or ugly—as if it’s an attribute separate and distinct from the object itself, when it is in fact intrinsic. Beauty is not something we assign to such and such. It leaps out at you, perhaps more real than the objects with which we describe.

  But that category had not existed for me. What was in front of me was simply what was. It required no further contemplation. Most would’ve called Ghiza VI horrifyingly ugly. But I had neither reference nor was taught to think in such terms. And so Ghiza VI was neither ugly to me nor beautiful.

  It simply was.

  There was nothing in my world that ought to be pondered or appreciated for its aesthetic. I didn’t even know the word. It is easy to communicate that I had no knowledge of art. It is a harder thing to understand that I had no sense of it. There was a time when you could’ve shown me a painting, and not only would I not grasp its meaning, I would not have been able to even fathom its purpose.

  But seeing Naiad—it wasn’t just a new world. It was a new world. The crystal blue oceans which spanned its vast surface was a color I hadn’t seen before. The massive habitation towers, like hulking steeples, rose frighteningly high over the waves. They spanned vast networks that were easily seen from orbit. I saw clouds—real clouds, not the smoggy haze of Ghiza VI. Their color was unnatural to my eyes as if you were to stick your hand in fire.

  And yet, I couldn’t look away. This world was a sapphire jewel with white foam.

  Its sight opened a new longing in me. It was something I realized I had been deprived of. I wondered why Ghiza VI was not like this, and what if I had lived here instead of with the Mantza. I suddenly had a strange thought, perhaps naive among those who are old enough to lose common sense. Why did we allow so many things to be ugly?

  Why was the whole universe not beautiful like this?

  The cold night of space began to brighten as the Aphelion descended. We joined a long traffic line of ships heading for a spaceport. I gawked at the many different kinds and shapes of ships just as much as the world itself. Some were long trams carrying hundreds of aliens throughout the solar system. Some were large cargo freighters with big, boxy holds. Some were mobile agri-houses, with domed modules for growing vegetation. Some were patrol ships, scanning and clearing vessels as they went. And some were strange. I saw one that had a spherical bridge that elongated into a thin neck with two large engines attached.

  My eyes could not keep up with them all.

  Instead of the desolate pads like in Ghiza VI, the spaceport on Naiad was like a flower nestled at the top of the habitation tower. Great petals of steel curved around each other, leaving narrow and wider gaps for ships to enter and exit. Crisscrossing the interior of these petals were creases meant as individual landing pads. Each ship was given its own nook to rest in accordance with its size. It seemed the smaller ships stuck to the outside and the periphery. Meanwhile, large ships were given dedicated traffic lines right to the center of the spaceport.

  The Aphelion took a berth somewhere in the middle. We were in a small hanger-like space that only accommodated our vessel. I felt the ship make three great clunks as braces extended to lock the vessel in place.

  And then we had touched down.

  I ran for the airlock, forcing Ingrish to keep up with me. Although, I confess, I was not running towards the miracle world that was Naiad. I was running away from Ingrish, guarding my mind as closely as I could.

  For the first time in my life, I felt the fear of holding a secret. And hoped against all hope that she had not pierced the reason she had so nearly died. I had hoped she had not seen that part of myself that I now hid like a shameful mark.

  Of course, Ingrish, being as perceptive as she was, would’ve known the second from my outburst in the mess hall.

  I caught up with Amon as he was punching in the door controls. He and Rykar had unloaded the prisoner from the stasis bay. The scaly alien was still in the pod, now floating on hover jets. The aperture opened, and as the air of a new world cycled into the ship, we saw an alien patiently waiting for us down below on the landing dock.

  Ingrish protectively pulled me close as Amon strode out to deliver his prisoner.