I believe it is worthy to note just how insulating things were upon the Aphelion. How looking back, the only things that mattered to me—the only things that now matter at all—happened upon an unassuming ship docked on a nameless fuel station.

  For instance, Oberyn was off attending a hundred more parties and scheming against his rivals. And although I am sure he made many moves and gambits worthy of the history books, none of them remain in my memory. Nira and Laerad remained in close communication, along with the rest of the Dalfaen coalition. But it was only in further decades that I learned Laerad had been waging a shadow campaign. He talked to us as if he had been in charge of the effort to reclaim humanity, when in reality, he was a small power in the Dalfaen calculation. And it was only after he was through with Amon that he gained the leverage to come out as one of the three reigning gene-lineages.

  And then there was simply everyone else, all the other players in the tournament, arriving into their gold palaces, the audience, billions enjoying their expensive pleasure cruises, and the countless more attending them. All of whom had their own lives no less interesting than any other. I could spend every day of the rest of my life trying to trace these events—these stories.

  But the truth was, I was privy to none of it. I was a child on a human freighter and that was the only perspective available to me.

  All I can relay to you are days wandering the ship, waiting by the viewports, and of course, Ingrish’s lessons. And I hope, when the time comes of the final accounting, when every piece of this history falls into its proper place, you’ll discover the thousand reasons why these peculiar moments have been preserved and so little else.

  I beg your patience for one more chapter, and then I shall recount the glories of the Rhodeshi death games.

  …

  Ingrish had taken Amon’s advice and decided upon history. She sat me down in the mess hall with several data-slates containing every little bit of information she could scrounge about my homeworld. From most databases in the galaxy, that would’ve taken some doing. But from the Aphelion, she had everything she could’ve asked for. Everything except the world itself. And as that stood, she had everything except the one part that mattered to me.

  I was at once assaulted with the pre-colonization survey maps of Kaal, the projections showing the planet’s early development followed by dozens of mineral and atmospheric compositions. It was originally a world of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and just enough toxic acids to melt your skin off. No less a putrid sphere like Ghiza VI, it was actually far worse. The blistering temperatures made it so that no lifeform could survive on the surface, not even the Mantza. It was like many planets found during humanity’s early days, barren and lifeless. It was only after exploring a third of the galaxy that we discovered actual alien intelligence, cloistered on their small worlds.

  I will remark, of the things Tut told me about his kind, it was not that humanity had so far surpassed his race, that humanity had been the first to cross the great reaches—which had earned their contempt. It was rather that our ambitions had been too low, that by our first contact, we had forgotten everything the Belazzar desired to know. Our races met bitterly, without the joyous reconciliation that had been expected.

  And it was with that same contempt I treated the lesson. Ingrish thrust in my face the data image of a human I had never seen before. Yet, my interest immediately died when she told me this man had passed away thousands of years ago. His very bones had crumbled to dust in some hallowed grave that was nonetheless forgotten.

  She told me of Manse Ruell, a man whose name had been nearly forgotten to the distance of time. I was not even given his picture so much as an artistic representation of the founder. Part of the second generation of terraformers, he had led his fleet to reclaim the scarred worlds devastated by the Ranon Autonomy.

  He was the first name in Kaal’s story, and a name I rejected out of hand. I placed the data-slate on the table and crossed my arms.

  “Why?”

  Ingrish hesitated. “It’s your history.”

  “Why is it my history?” I asked again, using the word she had spoken even though I did not comprehend its full extent.

  Yes, I had been interested once, when Ingrish first told me of Kaal. And it was an interest that was immediately crushed when Amon told me the truth. The planet that she had shown me in the computer was long gone. It didn’t exist. And since it didn’t exist, it didn’t for me. After all, what was the point? It was an abandoned jungle. And in fact, it was less than that in my eyes. After all, an abandoned jungle might’ve held some mystique for another human, but not me, not a child instructed by the Mantza. All I saw in Ingrish’s pictures was plant-growth and dirty plasteel.

  There was no other consideration. It was gone, and so for myself, it did not exist at all.

  “It’s important.” Ingrish stressed.

  “Why?” I demanded again, almost expecting her to singlehandedly solve the greatest philosophical questions of the cosmos. Because unless she could present to me every justification, every argument, every undeniable reason—and to butcher language itself so low that even I could understand it—I was ready to dismiss this history and everything that came with it.

  After all, what was the point?

  “Listen, this mythology—”

  “Mythology?”

  Ingrish bit her lip in frustration and clenched her hands, regretting her poor choice of words. “Stories we tell.”

  “So it’s not true?”

  “N-No. Not exactly, but—”

  “So it’s a lie!” I exclaimed triumphantly, crossing my arms and grinning to myself for winning against this pointless lesson.

  I was already getting down from my chair, ready to head back to my quarters. However, Ingrish gently grabbed my arm and sat me back down.

  She smiled, as if amused by a joke I couldn’t hear. But there was something else in her expression, something that seemed to slip through her usual demeanor. She went quiet for a long moment, still holding onto my arm. As if she was turning over a hard decision in her head, she finally straightened and let go, looking at me.

  Ingrish had always been so nervous—so meek. Suddenly, she seemed altogether distant. She undid the headband around her head. Placing it on the table with her eyes closed, she carefully folded the scarlet cloth. Leaning forward, she opened her eyes once more—the green orbs stared at me.

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  “Take a long look,” she said, speaking with her real voice. “Do you see any difference?”

  I didn’t understand what she meant, but just as she pointed it out, I noticed the smallest of imperfections. It would’ve been impossible for me to see before at her quarters—she had hidden her face too quickly. But upon closer inspection, her left eye was a lighter shade than the right. In fact, the flesh around her eye seemed the tiniest bit off. It sagged just a little more than and was of a paler color. It was then I realized it was similar to much of the flesh of my own body. Scar tissue. Painstakingly concealed, but it was scar tissue nonetheless.

  “This eye is a fake. It’s where a slug-round was shot through my head.” Ingrish spoke, giving one more second to look before she wrapped the cloth around again. “I can’t put it in words for you, not even thought. Do you remember what I told you when we first met? Kaal isn’t just a place. It runs in your blood—the stories too. It’s not a lie. It’s what you are.”

  Ingrish smiled again, and suddenly the woman I knew was back. Still, to this day, I do not know whether it was my flippant attitude or the agonizing stress of what was happening to Amon which caused her mask slip. And perhaps it was simply necessary for the lesson, that Ingrish knew better than anyone else that you can’t just run away from what you are.

  As I drop one pretense for another, so too I cannot help but think of the woman herself—what she was. I had never considered it from the telepath’s point of view. She could see others totally, for who they truly were. And so it was tempting for her, as it was tempting for all Bakke, to become the perfect veneer others wanted her to be.

  That was the alien side of Ingrish. What part of her was more real? The Ingrish she desperately wanted to be for me? Or the Ingrish she wanted to leave behind, the one that hid a bullet wound? And this is the strangest thought, Ingrish never once lied to me. She was my mother, in every way that counted, but as I reflect from nearly one thousand years in the future. I cannot help but recall how her real voice sounded so awfully different than the one in my head.

  …

  I don’t think it had been childish of me to fear Tut. There were many childish fears I experienced when I was young, but the fear of the ship’s doctor was a proper one. It was not, as some might imagine, that the doctor was particularly evil. There are many species that one could consider evil, but the Belazzar was not one of them. It was rather that Tut was not something humans, nor any other species, were meant to encounter.

  The ship’s doctor always left more scars on you than he healed—even if you couldn’t see them. Not to say that he was anything less than precise. Every time his surgeries were flawless, and every time, you left that medical bed feeling as though you lost a little something.

  That was why my eyes darted around in the darkness, searching for the spindly figure. I crouched low, doing my best to not make a sound, as if that would make any difference to the doctor. I winced as the door to the medical bay opened rather loudly, and I crept inside.

  Amon was undergoing the last transitions of the Carapace Armor. The last work was done invisibly, nanites changing molecular structures and forming yet more layers of hardened mechanical tissue. He was lying face up in the surgery suit, looking like some alien monster from a bygone battlefield.

  I did not know why I was so compelled by his final request, watching as much as I could over the long days. But as I realized, this was the first thing Amon had ever truly asked of me. Not as an order, not some instruction for the daily tasks of the ship, but something more. Is there a word for an act that fleshes your purpose? Your reason for existence? Perhaps not in the human language anymore, for there are none left to speak it.

  But Amon had finally given me a role, and I was not going to let my fear of the ship’s doctor keep me from it.

  And so I waited and watched in the dark medical bay.

  As I reflect now, it is strange to me that places of healing are always homes to such horror. These are places where the body is sliced, mangled, and splayed open, only to be put back together again. We do this great violence to avert death, which comes for us anyway in due time. The only conclusion I can draw is that it is all a battlefield. And while Amon could put on an armor that could make him immortal, it somehow still wasn’t a victory worth celebrating.

  I heard a shuffle of footsteps behind me, and I did not turn around. My shoulders fell as the object of my greatest fear approached.

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” Tut wheezed.

  “I am,” I quietly responded.

  I did not know what the Belazzar was going to do. Honestly, over the years I have had many nightmares that the alien would abduct me from my quarters and do to me like what he did to Amon.

  But Tut acted like he didn’t care. He simply stepped forward and observed alongside me. With his hands behind his back, the only sound in the medical bay were the long wheezes of his respirator.

  “Why?” I asked, not even sure what I was asking. But there was something that ought to be explained here, something that ought to be justified. It wasn’t right that such horror had been done here. And if I were to leave here without understanding the reason, then it was just senseless. And that somehow seemed even worse.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t understand the necessary reason for the Rhodeshi games nor the armor’s functional purpose. But that wasn’t enough. I needed to know why this had happened, not the excuses we make in the meantime.

  Tut laughed, and it was an awful sound. “Ask your mother.”

  “Now,” I said.

  Tut thought for a moment. “You are not you.”

  I glanced up at him, confused. “What?”

  Tut leaned over me, as if he was inspecting some piece of putrid meat. “This is not you.” He pointed to my body. “This is not you.” He pointed to my head.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You are imperfect, disordered. You are not you.” Tut waved over to Amon. “He is not him.”

  “I don’t understand,” I replied, more frustrated.

  “Faulty. Broken. Imperfect.”

  “How can I be broken?”

  “How can you be made to be perfect?” Tut responded with another question.

  It was at this I stopped and realized he had been speaking with me fluently—even better than Kybit could. I furrowed my brow, confused. As Tut was the last person on this ship I ever wanted to talk to. “How can you speak like me?”

  “I am the doctor assigned. I must know how to fix.”

  With that, Tut left me, and as the Belazzar closed the bay door behind him, I tasted vomit in my mouth.

  I did not know what Tut meant in the medical bay back then, but with the grace of the time and hindsight, I have no need to obscure his meaning now.

  The truth was, neither Amon nor myself were properly human in Tut’s eyes. After all, we were the products of modification, careful genetic therapy to uplift us to a higher existence than our forebears. We had finally loosed the shackles of biology, but the humans we once were as a species—the kind that had been molded from the dust of Terra—they were all gone. We were simply the ignoble things that took their place, and we were far lesser than our predecessors.

  In Tut’s eyes, the armor was a… not a punishment I suppose. But it was an inevitability. It was the end of the road we set ourselves down, extending and protecting life without one thought to what immortality really means. And at the final conclusion, when our experiments raised a legion of deathless enemies, the only thing we had left to turn to was the armor.

  It’s a tragedy that we can never go back. That original stock, the ones who built crude rockets and lived for no more than a mere century, they had died off thousands of years ago. There’s no telling when, and the truth has all but fallen into myth. And so too everything else.

  For myself, I believe our first extinction happened shortly after our sun had been poisoned. That had been the great fracturing of our race, when the trunk split off into a thousand different branches. It just happened that my lineage was the next obvious successor, and so we continued the name.

  However, I must wonder of that moment, all those millennia ago. There’s no record, no final account, not one word that was written of the last human—the last one of our true ancestors. And when he looked up into the stars and breathed his last, no one had been there to take notice. No one had been there when the last human faded into that long night.

  What I think now is that Ingrish had been right to reprimand me. For this unknown individual, this nameless ghost, has haunted me all my life. As a child, I thought if only I could thrust everything into my plain view, then I could sort out what possessed real value. But it is true that these things have lives of their own. Stories, myths, whatever you call them. And it is equally true that the absence of these things weigh just as heavily in the final accounting. A story silent on the lips, a ghost with no name, these things shaped the course of events as much as anything written on these pages.

  I don’t speak in vain poetry. I was raised by insects after all. I mean when everything was said and done, when I decided upon my final course, it was that unknown, last human who tipped the scales. It was his life that altered the final calculus. It was for the death of the last of my kind that I declared war on the galaxy.

  Did his story matter, not knowing a single detail? I can’t help but think it mattered the most.