Like Yours

Fausta didn’t have an atmosphere. It was a hardy ice planet. The surface was a barren sheet for as far as an eye could see, and it had a ruddy, small core as far as planets went—barely hot enough to shift the land. 

Things would have to change, if life would ever get past the Protozoa pooling in the equatorial regions. The lone figure stood against the endless expanse of space. The gravity was weak—it was a sad excuse for a planetoid, but that didn’t matter to Ryn.

What mattered to her was at the equator—-the spark of life. It could not hear. Could not see, not the way most would think of it.

It wasn’t corporal in the way most beings were, flesh, organs—meat. Multicellar life had a compelling way about it—perhaps because it always found a way to speak for itself. But the source of life had its silent charms.

Ryn scooped up some steaming hot water into a small vial, swirling it around to stimulate the sample, holding it close to her face, examining it.

There wasn’t much in the way of life giving chemicals originating from Fausta—but its lack of atmosphere and just hot enough core had allowed for something to strike it—an asteroid maybe.

Now there was chemical soup. Life was raw and unenclosed—no cell walls. Just chemicals, wanting for more, somehow, melding, giving and taking for eons.

Ryn trekked across Fausta’s surface, the ice thickening as she crossed the icy terrain, until she met her waiting ship, metal jutting against the white landscape. The hatch opened with a whirl, a plume of smoke billowing out as the walkway thudded into the ice.

Ryn’s fingers were closed against the steamed over corked vial. She carefully deposited the vial into her database, her fingers flying over the keys as she pulled the specs for the sample.

She marked the planet on her map, to come back to. The ship slowly bolted up its primary power source, breaking free of the sluggish plantoid, and into the expanse.

Ryn was used to it—the blackness. Most of it was empty; space. Empty and cold or full and violent; there were rare moments of solace where life hadn’t learned to know itself yet; moons and planets—deep space creatures the size of the former. It was a cosmic ecosystem, the universe was, Ryn noted to herself. Not that most beings got to witness it, anyway. Not many beings lived long enough to see the cycles.

It was good then, that she wasn’t technically living, she mused, using her eyes to swipe the spectrometer window to the side, and enlarge the image of the star system she was in.

Ryn tapped her fingers against the sleek metal of her ships’ input module, watching the extrapolations as they flashed in front of the slow dragging progress bar.

Her ship continued gaining speed, and soon she was careening toward nothing, to the edge of the universe as it hurtled away from itself. She spent her time collecting specimens, watching evolution play out in different systems. Ryn was compelled to, the being she was, as she was created to gain and store knowledge.

She closed her eyes, and melded with the silence. Her metal surface was worn and scratched, the shade of her in the darkness like midnight blue, the blueish hue of the screen reflecting on what some would call her skin. Her system whirled, as she started calculating what may come of the soup—what branch it would take. Would something else hit it, imbue it with more to take from, or would the whole planetoid be torn to shreds by a rogue body?

Would life prevail? Sail? Swim? Stagnanate? She found it all intriguing, how it craved to exist. How if you waited long enough it would appear, against all odds.

And she was something like alive. Right?

Time is both a construct, and a physical phenomenon in space. It was living too, the way it folding in itself, wriggling and changing, exploding and spinning—consuming and being consumed.

Yet, it was dark, and Ryn was alone. She didn’t notice this keenly, as she had never been much of anything else; her sensors were not attuned to those kinds of stimuli.

She lived in a different way than biologics; and though she had traveled very far and throughout time, she knew that she was a singular model.

This was, of course, a benefit, in Ryn’s system. What is value but a betrayal of scarcity? She was certainly rare.

So was her collection for that matter. Red flashed across the screen, a frantic assortment of beeps bringing Ryn from her rest sequence. Her joints creaked and groaned with her movement, as she peered out into the void, past the translucent screen—at the object hurtling toward her ship.

Broken remnants of a larger space object, now reduced to an asteroid floated across the expanse. She narrowed her optic receptor, her back held stable by her power source.

Life form detected…low vitals.

On the rock was a pod, four pillars fastening it to the sediment. Despite the distance, Ryn could see dust covering the window of the stasis pod as it tumbled towards her. It had been floating for a while, she’d decided, likely from the nearby system, Polaris, perhaps. Polaris was light years away.

Ryn detached from her power source, the gauges in her back hissing as the mechanisms uncoupled. Rust flaked off of her, as she waited for the ship to slow from its high speed.

She calculated the distance, looking down at her rusted fingers, determining how much damage she’d take landing on the small surface. She’d have to sink her fingers in tight to stop, at just the right speed—and the window was closing. Despite her flaking exterior, her appendages were still deft, as she attached the cord to her back. She opened the hatch, following the trajectory she’d calculated with precision.

The lack of air, the almost lethal cold was no matter to Ryn, as her own decay was no matter to her. A layer of frost crystallized on her optic receptors. Her feet sharpened, dug into the rock. She heated herself a bit, hovering over the pod.

Ryn’s processor slowed, evaluating the pod and how it was wedged, calculating how best to free the organism.

Ryn wondered if the organism would be fixable. She had very little success fixing biologics, no matter the species. Her database was full of information about them, how they worked; muscle and sinew, tendons and arteries. Cables of meat, processors of flesh.

Ryn freed one hand from the anchor she’d made, wiping the frost and dirt away from the pod’s thin line of a window. The stasis pod’s face was red with a failure alert—and the asteroid was getting out of range of her cable.

The life form took a ragged breath that fogged the glass.

Ryn wrenched the pod free from the stone, and pushed herself off the rock, using the momentum to propel herself closer to the ship, her arms and legs tight around the pod as she waited for her cord to pull taut and reel her in.

Ryn cocked her head, watching the life form breathe. What would that be like? Breathing? A liability, more than anything, she decided, as she slammed into her dock.

The hatch shut.

Nothing worked like it used to when it was new, and as the cable uncoupled and dropped with a heavy thud on the floor. The ship continued on its course at Ryn’s behest.

She scanned the pod, looking for a way to get into the closed system. It was failing, and she wasn’t sure what kind of life form this was.

What chemicals did it require?

Ryn stared at the pod for a moment. There was usually a power source somewhere…she slipped off a cover, finding a somewhat familiar port. She brushed her finger over it, before inserting the appendage and performing a search for it’s compatibility.

It was not new, she noted, widening her search parameters. Not from Polaris either. But she had seen this kind of machine before—some time ago—in a completely different part of the universe.

A galaxy so many light years away from her coordinates she ran out of memory space for it. Ryn decided not to boot up her drives—instead she took some spare parts from her repair, and reverse engineered a replica from its blueprints.

She watched the form’s chest rise and fall. Its skin was ashen. It would die soon. Ryn connected the adapter she’d made to her power source, booting up the pod.

Ryn worked over the antiquated pod—noting in her circuits that it was possible the galaxy it hailed from could’ve long imploded by now.

Her processor worked at a higher speed than it had in a long time, heating rapidly, flashing across her screen, as she examined each specification of the pod to determine exactly what kind of organism it was built to house.

Intelligent likely, since it had been preserved.

Ryn cocked it’s head and peered at the organism. It had hands, lithe fingers, eyes that were shielded by closed lids. It had a smelling sensor too—and fur, coarse and thick.

A strange being. She did not often interact with so called intelligent biologics—after a certain step in evolution they became…

Something else.

It needed an oxygen mix to power it, her sensors informed her. Her current ship conditions were not lethal to it, but there was a chemical keeping it powered off.

Ryn could not understand why her optic processors kept returning to the window; it wasn’t necessary to focus on the organism to fix the pod. Ryn looked down at the rust covered metal she was composed of, wide looking up at the fleshy meat of the organism.

It seemed…different. Of course it was.

The organism let out a bellow as the pod whooshed open, its body falling forward, eyes still closed. Ryn opened her hands, catching the organism, her sharp, rusted instrument cutting into the delicate flesh of the creature.

Red liquid coated Ryn’s metal; she watched it paint her, her sensor detecting that it was the life fluid of the thing.

The creature shuddered, and though it opened its eyes, there was nothing but darkness. The ship was completely black, indistinguishable from the outside.

It shrieked in fear, before powering off. Ryn put the creature back in the pod, noting the properties of flesh.

Soft (?)

Warm (?)

Indeed, it would be 21% more efficient to work the pod if she mimicked its creators, if she had…skin. Dressed her metal, fitting it in a softer shell so as not to harm the creature.