Episode Five: Echoes
Revisionist: DrkVrtx

I arrive first, as always.

It will be no more than a minute or so before the next of us will be here. It will be an hour until the last comes. Everything will happen quickly after that.

For now, I am alone. I wait. Nothing in my starship moves. I sit on a bare white floor in the meditation pose I was taught as a fledgling. I do not pray. I have all of the serenity and silence in the universe. There are no distractions here. I am complete.

My starship's viewscreen shows a planet as it was long ago. Or not so long ago. For now, from this distance, the past is just arriving. It does not realize it is past.

These are that sorry little Human colony's last happy moments. This is the last hour they have to worry about everything that seems so terribly important and will not matter at all ever again. The miner knowing he ought ask the doctor about that lingering cough but putting it off because he fears the worst. The wife wondering if she heard her husband whisper another woman's name the night before. The debtor looking at hectares, deciding how many and which to sell to the bank. The mother scolding her daughter for the new stains that will never come out fully from her new dress.

My own mother is cooking. She is trying a new recipe. She hopes it will come out all right. This is her worry.

No one is going to taste that meal. No one ever does.

In my viewscreen, the colony Kal'on – Linud Lünder waits, consumed with everything trivial. In my ship, I wait and watch and try to remember as much as possible. I try to remember something new. Especially the trivial.

Another starship arrives, it one-light-year closer to the planet than I.

It is my ship. It is me inside it, sitting on the bare white floor. I am one year younger. I am alone.

She is dancing. She is amazing when she is dancing. She is always amazing. It is only especially so when dancing. But that I do not know yet.

I have never seen her at this club before. I would have remembered.

I come here to be left alone, to be surrounded by noise and crowd and solitude. I recite no sutras. I study no texts. But I have found my pebbles of enlightenment. They clink in my glass until they melt and become one with me.

I am drunk. I have just finished a contract that was more unpleasant than usual. I am not drinking to forget, however. Nothing about the contract or what I had to do for it bothers me or made me feel unpleasant in any way. I am drinking because I know it should have. I am drinking to remember why.

This is a Galactic Federation stationary platform. It is outside of the Central Planets and therefore quasi-public. But it is still under direct federal administration. It is too important to be a franchise. All of the people here look like Centrics. So will everyone outside. They came to study at the military and political academies, or to visit their friends doing so, or feel as though they are roughing it out here on the Rim.

In the architecture and hanging on the walls there is kitsch from a thousand worlds and ten thousand cultures stretching back perhaps as many years. This is called "authentic" by the youths here patronizing it. They will cite this place for authority in many haughty monologues in the coming years.

The coming years will take much from them, most satisfyingly their youth. I know mine will remain for decades yet. But still I will work for them and their interests as I have and do for their parents. I will still drink considerably afterward, probably as their children and grandchildren dance and revel below. Nothing ever changes, least of all myself.

As I look down from the balcony, I see her on the dance floor again. Her black hair is shimmering under the arcing neon lights and lasers and the mist. Her hair lifts with anti-rhythm to the rest of her body. Her dress is white but scatters the light around it as if casting rainbows in every direction. Her eyes are closed with concentration. Her smile is radiant. She dances with many others, but she is only with herself. Always she is happy and content in herself. Always she is complete. She is fey. She is perfect.

I want her. I need her in my life, at least for tonight. She will solve everything else, at least for tonight.

I find myself fingering the gold chain on my neck. It is decided.

I finish the rest of my double whiskey in a gulp. I leave my stool. My legs wobble with uncharacteristic indecisiveness. I count my straws again. They've gotten away from me, or else I am seeing double. Either way, I am doing well tonight. It has been a while.

The spiral staircase is a challenge. My right hand never leaves the railing. I can leap ledge to ledge. I am an acrobat paramount. I am praeternatural in dexterity. I tell myself this while I hope each foot steady-finds the next stair step.

My concentration on changing elevation has kept me from keeping track of her. As I approach the dance floor, she is no longer there. She is no longer dancing.

She has disappeared. I am alone again, surrounded.

I can feel my face contort with rage. It is unbecoming, so I suppress it. The years of Chozoan asceticism were not wasted.

I push my way through the crowd toward the bar, ready to order. I order another double. I am not rude, but my shoulders do not suffer anything less than the utmost deference. Those who feel brave enough to swing their vision to meet mine quickly find something else more interesting to look at on the ceiling or the nearby stranger or their own feet.

I am pleased, but my pleasure is never very potent weighed against other things. My drink tastes of bile. I feel my heart pump it, yellow and black.

That is all I remember until suddenly I am outside the establishment, and she is pulling me by bloody knuckles away from a crowd and three young fellows who are sprawled on the ground, achieving varying success at consciousness.

She is telling me they are sons of important people. She is telling me I shouldn't have done that. She is telling me it was just their drunkenness that made them unmannered. I am telling her prosthetic teeth remind one to be well-mannered. I am laughing.

She loves me for it then. Later, she will hate me for the same thing.

We get in the lorry. We go to her home together. No one else gets to see what we do together.

One's efforts to shape the occurring present are like with magma. Once the moment is past, it will be cold stone forever.

But memory of the occurrence is clay never sent to kiln. It can be made over again and again.

The beginnings of things are less well-recalled than their ends.

The mind retrieves the early things to examine then replace into memory. The rough edges are smoothed away in the handling. The more a thing is thought about, the less it resembles its self. It resembles more how one would like it to be.

Once gone, the event is only an illusion. Remembering is invention.

One must take great pains to experience reality as it truly was.

We appear, one after another, before K-2L. We appear, each in our own ship, in a row spaced evenly through space and time. They are me, as I once was, in the ships I once piloted. We are together, each alone.

They are one light-year closer to the planet every time. They have come for the same thing as I. They have come as I did each year before. They have come to watch what will happen. They have come to watch what always happens. They have come to hope for anything else.

The sorry little planet hangs, surrounded by nothing. It is protected by nothing and no one. The stupid Human colony does not expect ever to be interrupted with notability or notoriety. All anyone there wants is to be left alone. All anyone ever wants is to be left alone. All anyone ever wants is to be happy.

This is not something anyone ever gets to ask for and have answered.

This is the lesson the past teaches but does not know itself.

My first good-bye to her is recalled easily. It is recalled clearly.

I stand at the entrance to her cramped dormitory, ready to leave. I have not yet left, however. I am behaving peculiarly. I do not know why I should care to remain with someone new till almost midday.

She comes out of the bathroom. She is in "comfort mode." Her clothing is loose-fitting and hides every contour. Her hair is the opposite, pulled back tightly. She will not be leaving the flat today at all. This is her right.

I finally bathed at her insistence but remain an outward mess. She has marveled at my invulnerability from the damaging powers of ethanol. Sobriety retook me shortly after we arrived at her home the night before. Without consistent new additions, I feel no harm. She has not my physiology.

All her glamor from the night before is gone. That particular radiance is absent. A subtler one possesses her now. I recognize too late it possesses me as well. Her only jewelry is my gold necklace. I do not remember giving it to her, but I am glad that I have, in retrospect.

We had only just managed to exchange names before physically intertwining. Now Li Min convinces me to agree on a prime root and modular number. I am certain then I will never use it to contact her. We had a pleasant few hours together. She is attractive, but too young. She is clever, but naive. I will travel everywhere and likely die before some return. She will be at the academy years more yet. However pleasant and easy she is to talk to, I will not ever talk to her again.

But she knows I am Samus Aran. I do not know why I told her.

I never remember why I told her.

We are all here: all of me in my dozens here. It is time.

The illusion of serenity breaks. I see the first of the enemy arrive now. The Space Pirate ship hides on the far side of K-2L's largest moon as it warps into range. This is another sign of their cleverness. They never send a raiding party anywhere in force without scouting first. They never send a raiding party anywhere without making sure it is safe for them.

A pirate raider is not what one would call intelligent. Wisdom, conscience, and strategy are not attributes high command would burden any but the highest classes with. Still, all of them are clever. As it comes to pillage and slaughter, each hatches with epigenetic aptitude. This is their gift. This is their nature. All of the exo-biologists say so. I have sat for the lectures. I have heard the evidence.

I am convinced of their aptitude.

The first ship arrives completely into real space. It begins to speed around the moon. The first ship begins to speed around the planet itself now. It is very quick. It gets to the other side of K-2L. It starts back around. There are no defenses below. It has confirmed the earlier reports. The rest of the pirate raiding party begin to warp in, hidden behind the moon. They will not concern themselves with caution.

In moments, their first ships will land. Then they will move quickly. But they will not hurry. If one spots a bit of meat it expects to be tasty, they will not pass it by. They will savor and revel.

I know this because I have watched it many times.

I know this because I am there.

Everything dies. Fecundity is an investment only in rot.

A jungle stinks with never-ceasing putrefaction. An ocean blooms with teeming trillion-trillions one day only to decay and make the same place a charnel house the next.

Life is the universe speeding along its own irreversible entropy. That is the lesson everything is trying to teach us.

At the end of time, there will be no going back. It is to our fortune that we will not then be capable of acknowledging the foolishness of our shared hallucinations.

Our hallucination is to mistake chaos's increase as "progress."

Our hallucination is consciousness.

Li sends me a message less than a week after our first coupling. I do not receive it for several weeks due to unforeseen professional complications. To my surprise, she only sends the one. If she had sent two, I would not have answered. I tell her so. I do not know when next I will be nearby, but memories of our short time together remain pleasant.

Soon after, I also recommend a poorly organized grey-market bounty hunter database she might be able to get access to. I think it would help her with her intelligence studies, for deep background.

Ultimately, it was me, then, who brought work in to our pleasure.

Our communications after are infrequent. Weeks or months pass without any communication, then a mutual flurry and another break. Never are any messages unwelcome.

The next time I have cause to visit the academies, it will be more than a year since I have felt her touch. I give her a week and a half of notice. She responds the next day. She is obviously excited. She knows a Grondheimian restaurant near the docks. The only entrance is off of a side street, from the alley. The owner is an emigrant who brought her parents with her to the platform. They are the head chefs, day shift and night. In her electronic messages, Li tells me many things about the restaurant. It's one of the favorite out-of-the-way places for her friends and her to go. She goes on and on about its genuineness in every area. She is obviously excited.

"Have you ever been to Grondheim?" I ask her a week before I arrive.

"No," she replies the same day.

"Then how are you so sure the restaurant is representative of the cuisine and culture of Grondheim?" I send her two days later.

The rest of the week finishes without a reply from Li. I finalize my schedule and let her know when exactly I will be getting into the docks. She acknowledges she received it, but that is all. I begin to wonder if she will show up to see me.

When finally I leave my ship to go to the prearranged location, there is a knot in my stomach I have not felt in some time. I remember her being unimpressed with my state of dress when we met so I am in my formal wear. It is gray and plain, but there is a Federal eagle over my heart. My hair is tied back. I look serious. I look clean. I do not think she will be there. I am sure she will not be there.

She is there. She has her hair down, falling over her shoulders, but I see the necklace I left with her there. Her pants are calf-length, loose and tan. Her shirt is a minimalist design, long-sleeved red with white lettering on the chest: GFPC § 46.08 (a) (b).

" 'A person commits this offense if, while a vessel is involved in interstellar commerce a pirate attempts to interfere with its authorized progress to a destination,' I say while walking the rest of the distance to her. I lean in to hug her. She receives it.

" 'An offense under this section is penalized by death,' " she replies to finish the statute.

I am smiling. I cannot help myself. I had ranted about that the morning after the night we met. She had remembered.

"Here," she says, without expression. She pulls a glance screen out of her back pocket and puts it in my chest for me to take. I do. She starts walking. I follow her with split concentration. The glance screen is projecting a detailed report of the history of cuisine in Grondheim, focusing on the southern continent's eastern coast from late antiquity to the present. The executive summary is 20 screen lengths.

I follow her, not really reading the report but skimming it. The full report is more than 5,000 page screens The author group is from a colonial university on the planet, but the annotations and commentary are Li's own. They are scattered about the length of the report in dense clusters. There is something obscene about her I had not realized previously. I am excited.

When we do get to the restaurant, it is as she had described. The kitchen is in full view of the bar. No table can fit more than six humanoids. There is more room for red crystals than seating. A line of people roughly Li's age stand near the door waiting to get in. I walk to the front of the line to pay the host for a retroactive reservation. The host says that for twice that, she can check whether one of the booth reservations has been canceled. Li and I will eat our dinner in the booth.

"I am very impressed by this," I tell her after she finishes talking to the host and sits down. I set the glance screen aside. "What made you go through all of the trouble, though?"

"Your message made sound like you thought I was a naive child," Li says. "I wanted you to know that I know what I'm talking about."

"You should order food for us then," I say.

On my side of the menu I select a few mixed drinks and a wine from the tabletop menu. She asks what I ordered and selects two for herself. They appear in the wall panel and I remove them. We toast to seeing new people again then we shoot the Carnicero Platform Special. She makes a face but holds it down. I take a sip from my second drink. She waits another two seconds before doing the same, chasing the taste in her mouth away with a few gulps.

"You are something different," I say, gesturing at the drink she just took and the glance screen she handed me. "I will not promise to read all of this, you know."

"Yes. But you'll still know that I have."

She has not smiled at me yet today. I sometimes have trouble reading faces without my exoskeleton. It is especially true now. The booth is quiet until there is a knock as the food arrives, brought by a server who quickly leaves again.

She begins to eat and I follow her lead. When the first bite is in my mouth, I start to chuckle. I try to hold it in but fail.

"What is it?" she asks. I think she sounds irritated.

"Li, you are a brilliant young woman. I have enjoyed all of our time together and communication." I pause. I am trying to think of some nice way to tell her. "Li, this food is delicious. Whatever this is, it is a wonderful meal."

"It's called Immot'k, a traditional meal of the Hau Order-"

I laugh again. I cannot help myself.

"No, this food is delicious. There is nothing traditional about it. I have had the misfortune of staying on Gronheim for two weeks once. Their food is edible, strictly speaking. But one does not seek it out. The palette of residents of that planet is quite peculiar, to say nothing of the monks."

"Nothing I read about it mentioned anything like that."

"Gronheim is out in the sticks, almost Pirate territory. No one from the Central Planets or Middle Systems ever has cause to go out there. It tastes fine to the colonists there, or perhaps they enjoy a particular culinary masochism. Who would ever have cause to talk about it?"

She is angry now. I can tell. I cannot help myself.

"Look." I open the booth's door and point. "Do you see the Human line cook? Did you notice when we came in how he was tasting everything? The chef is working, and may even be good enough to add some of her own seasoning. But she does not want to taste anything. She is not back home. She is making food for a different sort of people now."

I lean back in and we shut the door. Li is quiet. She is looking at my face, eyes darting back and forth. They stop.

"Where did you stay?" she says. "On Grondheim. Which continent? Which coast?"

"The southern coast of the northern continent. Some days in the interior of the southern continent for work."

"So you don't really know, do you?" she says. "It may just be the food you had was awful in the area you visited. They're from the eastern portion of the southern continent. I asked them. This could be authentic regional cuisine."

I shrug.

"You may be right. I do not know for certain. I do not care to. But I do know this is delicious, and I am quite happy you brought me here."

Her shoulders bunch up as if working up an argument, but finally she smiles. We go back to drinking and eating. She asks why I dressed up; I tell her I thought it would make her feel more comfortable. That is her answer to wearing the pants and Galactic Federation Penal Code shirt as well. We drink more. There are more arguments, but also more laughing. Time does not seem to pass in the booth at all. It is a place I like to remember.

When it is time to leave and pay, we begin to fight over the bill. I desire to pay for everything. I am an adult with an income. She says she is an adult with an inheritance.

"I am stubborn," I say. "I will not budge on this."

"I'm just as stubborn as you," Li says. "I am your host here, and I'll pay for us."

"I am bigger and stronger than you are. I am meaner. If I insist on paying, they will listen to me before you."

"That's true," she says. "That's why I made sure they'd deduct from my Fisks before I sat down to join you."

Curses begin to exit my mouth like a waterfall before they bubble into another laugh. I love her for this right now. Later I will hate her for the same thing.

"I will get you back for this," I say when we leave. My mind is on a particular prophecy. "I am mean, and my wrath is terrible."

"But I am clever," Li says. "Are you sure it wasn't my plan all along to get you riled up after dinner?"

There had been some talk earlier about taking a tour of the platform together. Instead we return to my rented room and do not leave for the next 32 hours.

We keep in better contact after that.

Soon, the academies seemed not too far out of my way on more and more occasions. Serendipity meant I could transport her from her home in the Central Planets back to school, or vice versa.

We were each determined to let the other know we harbored no serious intentions.

"I still have all of the tests upcoming to graduate the data-analysis program. Then I have at least two years of military training and field work service, and assuming I maintain standards during all of that, I still have to be accepted and have a written recommendation to get into the clandestine services track," Li said. "I don't have time or the energy for a relationship. It wouldn't be fair."

It sounded fine logic and a plan at the time. I agreed whole-hearted for my own reasons.

"You are very lovely to be with, but if you need to hear 'I love you,' you will need to find another's lips," I warned.

But the years slip away and add together on their own. This is their subtle conspiracy.

Space Pirates reach the surface of K-2L and creep upon it. Those in the settlements know something unwanted is to happen. They do not yet know they will all die or how terrible it will be. Hope remains that it is not so dire as their fears insist. Hope remains in some other explanation. Hope remains in a Savior.

Unfortunately, Prophecy did not care to include them among the saved.

My eyes stay fixed, but I do not watch this. This is the worst part. This is the place I do not return to. I will not join the little girl on that planet for this. She will have to survive on her own strength, however improbable that is.

But she will. She and no one else.

The worst will not last long. Their hopes are snuffed out. Smoke billows up and wraps around the lower atmosphere. There is nothing more to see for hours except individual pirate ships leaving, then all remaining lift away in haste and are gone. There is nothing to see for days but that smoke, blowing in one direction then another with the wind.

I nudge the ship forward, through the approaching light-days. Some of my recent past selves are arriving to watch as well.

There was a time when I made myself experience this echo in full. I meditated on it. Recalling the hunger and thirst on the surface, I too neither ate nor drank. I let the heat and cold ravage me as it almost consumed me there. I remembered the stray dogs and their teeth in detail, and the scamper up small trees or on still-standing roofs. I have not the energy for such masochism any longer. In a million years, we will all be dead.

Above the smoking planet, the elegant Chozoan spacecraft shimmers into existence. I cannot see their probes, but I know they send them. Prophecy led them to look for a messiah here. Now they wonder, was there some mistake? Did they arrive too late?

But one of the probes finds the lifesigns of a Human child. She is too exhausted and weak to be frightened by the sight of the giant bird people. A wound on her thigh cut deep and much blood was lost. She needs medical care, but to have any hope, she needs a transfusion. The leader of the Chozo expedition is known as Old Bird. He offers his own. As is custom, he adopts as his own the Human girl who carries his blood in her. He will raise her and protect her, Old Bird says, and the Chozo will teach her all of their ways.

They wait until later to explain how serendipitous the Space Pirate raid was, coming when it did to burn up so much chaff. If not for it and the protective hand of destiny, their Savior might never have been found.

Li says hello when I come through the door. She does not look up. I do not say hello to her.

She is on her couch, legs stretched and bare. A glance-screen is in one hand. The other holds a wine glass half-filled. She no longer imbibes liquor. She no longer gets drunk. She no longer dances. She still smiles, but not for me.

She has been cutting her hair short for several years, but this night I see new lines on her face I did not notice before. This terrifies me.

She no longer wears the necklace. I do not remember the last time I saw it. I never think to ask.

This is our last night together as one. I do not realize that at the time. Later I realize that she had left me already, long before. I do not realize this is just the echo finishing.

I see us there again, in memory. I have come to her flat. No. It is our flat. It has been for some years. I have bought almost half of everything in it. I keep my own house despite this, for the illusion is useful and necessary. I am my own independent person. She is likewise. This is the pretense that lets me continue as I had been before her, that I might remain myself.

My dalliances away from her never ceased, even when hers puttered out. My assurances that my love was vast and she remained my favorite book to read failed to assure her.

Love is not a bookshelf.

We are very much done. That which delighted her about me before irritates her now. I am unchanged, but she is not. The arguments have grown more silences have stretched longer. We have ended some time before. It is only the echoes now.

I do not know this at the time. If I do know, I care not to acknowledge it. The pretending still is nice and enjoyable to bask in. It continues to be, if I let the memory itself bubble up again, only.

When finally she looks up from her screen, there is some reconciliation regarding some dispute. We had fought, and I had left without resolving it. I was wrong but will make no alterations in my choices. I apologize here, but for all the wrong things. She does not forgive me but can muster no more anger or concern. She cannot care enough about me even for spite. At the end, there is not even that.

We sign the pact in flesh on her bed, and for the last time I taste myself on her lips. I understand it to be so, perhaps. But I say no good-byes. Instead I leave before she wakes and let the silence stretch long, into forever.

I came to mourn the dead, and I have failed. I miss her. My thoughts all lead back to her.

There has been no one else since her. There has been pleasure, surely, but no person to share mind with as well as body.

Her absence makes me more miserable than I remember her presence ever giving joy to me.

I never took her on this annual ritual of end and beginning. I thought it too private. She asked where I was going, and always I evaded. I realize now I ought to have brought her. But I did not. And never will. It is too late to amend the past. It does not change, no matter how often you watch it.

This is time and regret and how it treats you. This is living.

Everyone I knew from my birthplace's planet is dead. Everyone who rescued me from it as well. I am alone. She was the one who might have shared this with me. She is gone. There will not be another.

I am going to die - someday. When I am dead, I will not be mourned. I will not be missed. I will be remembered. I will be in histories and songs. I am irreplaceable. I will not be mourned.

This does not trouble me. I think very little about it. When I do think about it, I remind myself that no wail ever was loud enough to wake the dead. To the grave, all is silence.

This does not trouble me.

I am tired of my ritual.

I put in the coordinates for K-2L. This time I will finish my pilgrimage.

Space Pirates are difficult to hate. One cannot hate them as might be appropriate a murderer or cannibal. As a race they are these things, though, it must be understood.

One must despise them as a weed, for that is how they grow and spread. A raid is not over when all of them are killed above ground. That is just the beginning. They lay eggs soon as they land. Depending on the breed, three or 13 or 19 years later, their progeny emerge from the ground and attack again.

By all appearances it is a raid, but it is not. Not from the sky have they fallen but out of the ground risen. When the colonists or Federation go on the pursuit, the tunnel system they find underground is immense. There is no end to them.

Once a raid lands, the pirate ships will likely never return, but clawed ravagers will erupt from the ground forever.

They are not pirates. They are not a species. They are a virus. They are a virus. They are a virus in search of a cure.

I will cure them.

There is something perverse in each homeland step, but I make it anyway. For all I can remember of my first seven years, I was afraid so terribly of dying not 10 kilometers from my birth. I thought once I left, I would never return.

The end is at the beginning.

I want to make my way to home-home. It has been so long. Everything has collapsed on itself. The wind and dust and time have stolen from the land, and time itself has stolen from memory what used to be.

But geolocators will not fail me entirely. I can get back to my father's land without much trouble. I can walk it.

There was much happiness here once. My parents once joined here to produce me. I am the echo of an orgasm long since forgotten.

K-2L has been too near the pirate activity in decades following the raid. Interstellar lanes have been cleared recently, but no one has come back here to make a new life of what colonists lost in their horror.

My home is a wasteland. In every direction, my parents' generation is a wasteland. Nothing erected remains standing. There is no mine suspected of producing anything worth getting out if pirates might come again, from sky or ground.

There are no humans here. There is nothing here. Only failure. There is rot and there is rust and there is entropy.

This colony is the universe.

I change my visor to scan beneath the ground. For a moment, I forget where I am. I think I am back on Zebes. In every direction, there are tunnels. They crisscross one another. They link with expanded mineshafts and arteries. Pirates of every size and shape scurry within them. I identify fungal farm chambers, reservoir rooms, surface vents for cool and heat. I see no warrior class or non-anatomical weapons, but there are more pirates here than I thought possible.

The Galactic Federation still pays the bounty for Space Pirate trophies. It is rarely collected, but today I will do enough to make my spaceship groan from the weight of claws. What I cannot carry, I will leave in the dust, burning. Not one will escape me. They will learn firsthand what they taught me. They will find me a good student.

My visor follows a vent up to the surface behind a small grove of trees nearby. I remember my father had planted them less than a year before the raid, hoping they'd grow to lend shade for me and my children. It was to be a place of comfort away from anyone else. I understand him now.

My audi system has picked up a noise. I listen to it and hear a huh-huh-huh and an -eech-eech-eech.

I alter my visor filters until I see them, just beyond the trees, to the side of the small vent.

Two Space Pirates together are entwined. At first I think they are in some sort of fight. He standing behind she; she bent over, claws upon the ground. It is the mating stance. They stand in the shade.

Huh-huh-huh.

Eech-eech-eech.

My blood runs hot. It seems a mockery of defilement. The beam cannon continues to burn as I charge through the grove, tearing trees out of their roots but unhindered till I am standing in front of them in smoking vengeance. They appear to shriek. They uncouple. The male begins to run toward the vent, and my cannon tracks to him. The female moves in front of me, claws spread, not aggressive but chittering chittering chittering.

I leave my translator module to its work.

Kill him no, Big One, the female says. He go. I stay. He go. End me. Have sorry. He go mother's nest. Please, Big One. Please. I stay, end. He go, live.

She falls on her face, prostrate. My scan visor has been active, and looks her up and down and inside. I see she is already pregnant from a previous encounter.

I should fry them inside of her. I should burn her reproductive system and leave her to run about infertile, wasting the seed of innumerable partners. Otherwise she will burst with another generation of vermin in not yet eight weeks. Then they too will grow up to spawn more vermin. And they. And they.

I speak instead.

Is good, be young. Is good, have love, I say through my translator module. End take all. Till end, be. Till end, have love.

I let my cannon cool. I reach down to pick up one of the acorns still attached to a downed tree and place it in one of my suit's containers. Then I turn and leave. I walk away from the grove. I walk back into my ship. I lift off and return to space.

I will not come here again. This is not my home.

I am in the dark place tonight. The little girl is with me and there is nothing to silence her with. She is a useless thing. She has no pleasant memories to contribute. She can manage nothing but helplessness and terror. She feels she is to blame for everything. I know she is right. It is all that miserable child's fault. She remains and shrieks. I have no violence with which to chase her away.

I give Li very little notice before I am at her off-campus door, pounding. She opens it anyway. Many chemicals soil my bloodstream. Many, but none suffice.

She has company with her already, studying and drinking wine. I am unsure what to do. I cannot meet any of their eyes. I fear my face is still wet and red. The child is in me.

Li calls me her friend to the others. She puts me to bed away from them. She says she will not be long. I ask her to turn on the light before she leaves. I hate the little girl for making me ask it.

In remembrance, each moment is a fresh knife of hot shame. At the time, all I can manage is shivers beneath coverings.

Later, Li returns and lies down next to me. She doesn't ask what is the matter or if I need anything. She holds me. She strokes my hair. She tells me I am safe here. She tells me it is all right. Mostly she shushes softly and is near.

When I stop shivering, I know the worst is passed. She knows it as well. Li needles me about my smell. She says she knew I was there before knocked. I laugh, again crying. She asks if I would like to take a shower. I nod and let her undress me.

In reality, she is not strong enough to carry me. In effect she does. I stand. I follow her. I step into the shower as she does. Beyond that, I am catatonic. When the water comes on, she washes my hair and my back. She goes down to wash my feet and extremities, but if she is speaking, I cannot hear her over the reverberation of water inside my skull.

I turn around. I bend to place my hand under her chin and kiss her on the mouth.

"I love you," I say.

I let her say nothing. I kiss her again. I kiss her again.

"I love you." I kiss her. "I need you." I kiss her. "You make me happy. I love you. I love you. I love you."

Later in bed, we are together panting. She lays her head on my chest. I can smell her hair in my face. My breathing is rhythmic and she imagines me asleep, no doubt, as she whispers, "I love you, too."

I am not afraid anymore.