The Ark -

There is no pressure in space, no unseen all-encompassing force, to batter away at titanium walls. There is no debris to pummel at engines, not here. No nebula to slowly eat away, gnaw at this monstrosity. Yet the hull creaks every now and then. The empty hallways echo sounds that, by all rights, should not exist. Noises born like bastards, ill conceived and spat out into the world without intention. They run through corridors and vents, bouncing from wall to wall. Even an innocent chime flees, frantically looking for any way out. A ghost of an ambiance living in this colossal emptiness… An emptiness that floats in the great void. It seemed, and rightfully so, that eons passed, though one would not have been able to tell by looking at this great abomination of a ship. All remained unchanged… Until the creeping sounds seemed to falter and draw back. They ran scared and faded as something new took up the domination of decibels. A steady beating. Each bang arriving precisely after the same interval as the last. It almost seemed… Purposeful. The rhythmic pounding came ever closer down a musty aisle. The distinct sound of hydraulics became clear and all other noises fled in panic. There was nothing else to be heard anymore, only the steady march. A silhouette began to form as the ruckus turned louder and louder. Curves and electric panels. Breasts and wires. Determination nurtured and maintained through technology. She moved with steady strides, her pace never changing. Her face revealed no emotion, her gaze seemed intent on whatever lay ahead. She walked for days which turned into weeks. She walked from point A towards point B as weeks turned into months. She did not stop to rest or to contemplate her intention. The footfall suddenly stopped. She tilted her head a tiny fraction. She heard music. A light drum beat and… A ukulele. There was no doubt to her mind that it was Paul Anka’s Put Your Head on my Shoulder from an age so long ago that it baffles comprehension. “What is this?” Even to her the words sounded alien from her mouth. She turned her head to the right and stared at the wall. A violet orb suddenly appeared and four tentacles reached out of it. It seemed synthetic, nothing organic about it though the way it moved and slithered was uncannily natural. “I thought it might liven up the place a little.” The orb seemed to breathe as its light dimmed and slowly flared back up again. “Liven up… the place?” She turned her head a full 360 degrees. “There is nothing lively about this place. With or without Mr Anka, it’s much the same.” The squid pushed itself off the wall and straightened its tentacles to fly, not unlike a starfish, to stop floating a few inches in front of her eyes. “Well it got us finally talking didn’t it? I’d say that Mr Anka did a wonderful job.” Its violet light flickered playfully. The cyborg leaned in a bit closer, almost touching the squid with her nose. “Tipy.”

“Yes, Caretaker?” The orb’s light changed to a meek white as it waited for an answer. “Did it ever occur to you, that I don’t want to talk?” The Caretaker didn’t wait for an answer and rushed on ahead. Tipy shot through the air, spinning like a starfish again, after her. “Oh come on. We’ve started on the inspection cycle two months ago and you haven’t said a single word to me.” By this point Tipy was floating along next to her head. They were both moving down the, seemingly, endless corridor. They made their way further and further through the dark hallway, Tipy had yet to receive an answer. “I refuse to believe that you never feel lonely.” The synthetic squid said stubbornly as it shifted its color to gray. “What do you know of feeling lonely?” She said without stopping or slowing. “Well I know enough of it to play this damn song in the hopes of you finally talking to me.” “What else?” Her voice reflected a cold determination. Tipy did not answer right away, his orb kept shifting colors as he considered the question. From red to pink to orange and black. “It’s a feeling that I don’t like.” The Caretaker grunted, urging him to go on. “It bothers me whenever I feel it. It doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t scare me or make me feel like my life is in danger but…” “But?” Tipy’s colors shifted some more. The orb was black when he went on. “But I fear that if I feel it for long enough then it will do more harm. The longer it goes on the worse it gets.” The cyber-squid seemed to be coming to new realizations as it struggled to put it into words. “And the worse it gets the harder it is to stop it. Even now I felt it for months but I just couldn’t bring myself to talk to you. It’s like… The more time I spend alone the harder it seems to get out of it.” The Caretaker turned its head and looked at the Tipy as they went on. “What did you do during these two months, Tipy?” “You mean besides my tasks?” “Yes.” “Well…” Its light pulsed in black. “I… followed you some times. Other times I powered off in vents. To be fair I spent a lot of time in the vents. Just laid there and wondered why we aren’t going about the inspection together.” His orb suddenly flared red. “And then I got angry. Thought about shorting you a few times.” “That’s cute.” Tipy didn’t answer, and the conversation seemed to die but after an hour the Caretaker stopped and turned to her left. “Why are we stopping?” The tentacled orb asked. “We aren’t stopping.” “Then what? Are we going to steal one of the livers from a pod again?” The light suddenly flickered rapidly through red orange and yellow. “No.” The answer came clear as a large door slid open in front of them. “So?” “The time has come for the next step in your education, Tipy.” The squid pulsated in an uncertain gray.

They walked for a while until they came to an airlock and a gigantic window. The Caretaker didn’t need it but the ship wasn’t designed only for her. “Wait here, your tentacles won’t be enough out on the hull.” She stepped outside and established comms with Tipy. “And turn off that music before I turn you into a fried Calamari.” The squid agreed reluctantly and switched it off. It slithered to the window to watch the Caretaker step further out. She threaded a narrow pathway, exposed to the radiation of space. The fading light of a dying sun blanketed her body in orange. “What you don’t seem to understand, Tipy, is where we truly are.” She spoke the words harshly, bitterness oozing through their communication channel. The Caretaker stepped further out on the hull. “You don’t understand the task we have been given. The responsibility that I bear, trusted onto me by a an uncaring destiny.” She stepped further out on the hull as inside Tipy curled his tentacles protectively around his body and dimmed his orb, the light shifting between red and black. “We stand on the precipice of the end. Do you understand that?” The ship suddenly lurched from the gravitational pull of the all consuming black hole that it was orbiting. The engines flared up and worked to counteract the pull. The Ark steadied. “Not just the end of our species, but the end of everything that we can understand. We are at the whim of a dying sun. Waiting for time and space to disintegrate and the world to be born anew. You talk to me of loneliness yet you have no idea.” She took another step outward. Her entire body was now showered in a magnificent orange as she turned around to look at Tipy through the window. A dark silhouette framed by the gaze of a waning star as the astral hunger of a black hole floated behind her other shoulder. “Loneliness? You speak to me of loneliness? How tragic it is that we always reach this point, you and I.” The squid did not understand but chose to remain silent. “I have been aboard this Ark for a millenia’s milenia a hundred fold, a thousand fold even. Do you understand what I am saying?” “No, Caretaker.” His answer came as a whisper. “You are the tenth million Cyber-Squid, the tenth million model ST111 also called ‘Tipy’. You are not the first nor shall you be the last. You will die, just like the ten million before you and the next ten million after you. But I will still be here, Caretaker of the Great fucking Ark. Ark to a lost cause, to a purpose I don’t even have the capacity to remember anymore.” She paused for a second and then went on, speaking softly “Do not speak to me of loneliness while you have the great luxury of dying…” She turned her head sideways, gazing into the black hole. She felt it calling to her, felt it pulling at whatever figment of humanity she still retained. She lifted a foot, tentatively, to turn towards it when the Ark suddenly rocked and a series of explosions sounded far away on the ship. After so long, she finally felt something new, something that had faded in her memory into oblivion through the eons. She felt fear.