Dark Dweller

FANS OF ANDY WEIR WILL LOVE THIS “SCIENCE FACTION” NOVEL THAT PAIRS QUANTUM PHYSICS WITH THE GREEK PANTHEON

Told through various eyes, Dark Dweller follows a young girl who claims she has seen all of time and must save everyone from disaster.

The ship’s shrink, Dallas, scrawls again. The nib squeaks and taps on the sapphire screen. Her eyes are greedy, and a conceited little smile crests her lips. She’s enjoying this. To her, I’m the find of a lifetime. A case study for which all psychiatrists wish. A trophy to laud in hopes of some academic prize. She thinks her work, her life, important. It isn’t.

My life is, though. Too important to end up in this damn box. This wasn’t part of the vision. The Fulcrum approaches, and I only get one shot. Humanity only gets one shot.

None of us has time for this shit.

Dallas raises her eyebrows and waits, though she hasn’t asked a question in the last five minutes. Does this waif think I’ll just blurt out everything in my head to her? Start gabbing like a gossipy teenager? It’s been so long since I was truly an adolescent. Easy to forget how your opinions and needs are pushed aside for those who consider themselves adult. My chest swells hot. In my day, spaceflight was a privilege – a reward for years of hard work and training. Who the hell is this woman? My gaze roves over her auburn hair, which glows in the manufactured white light of the medical bay. The careless tumble of hair scattered over a woman’s shoulders, down her back, might attract some teenage boy. I’m sure the batting of surgical lashes got her this gig. But to my eyes, which have looked across the fabric of space and time, creation and death, she’s no lovelier than some silicate asteroid rolling through the void. A trifling thing when you have witnessed galaxies born into existence. “It must have been frightening, out here all alone,” Dallas pipes up. “I’m afraid of the dark, too.” My lip curls into a snarl. “You think you know darkness? You don’t. Not real darkness. That moment at night when you wake from a terrible dream and lie in the gloom, afraid and soaked in sweat? That’s not darkness, and certainly not fear. Shapes still emerge from that gloom, sounds still echo from some deep crevice.” I pace back and forth, fingers glancing the glass barrier. “For you, these gremlins may make the skin crawl and your heart beat faster,” I continue, “but for me, they would have been welcome in that void. Old friends to embrace and never let go.” Dallas eyes me, stylus resting on her bottom lip. “Fear is the absence of everything. No light, not even the pixelated colors when you squeeze your eyes tight. An onyx nothingness, forever. No sound, not even your breathing or heartbeat. Open your mouth to scream? Nothing comes. To swim in oblivion – the void – to be neither alive nor dead, that is to experience fear.” “In the void,” Dallas says, ignoring the obvious pain in my voice. “You told Commander Chau,” she searches for the sentence, “that you floated in nothing, the void, for an eternity. What does that mean?” “I’m not entirely sure how more precise I can be,” I snap back. “Which part of that isn’t clear?” “Well, a void could be literal or metaphysical,” Dallas replies. “Perhaps a mental void. Not to mention a human existing for eternity is impossible.” “Clearly it is possible, considering what they did to me.” It still isn’t clear what they – Gaia, specifically, the last of the Six – did. I was forty-three Solar Earth Years, SEYS, old when I arrived at Jupiter and she found me. Chau said I’ve been missing for more than one hundred and twenty SEYS. As Dallas understands the universe, I should be long since deceased. Instead, I sit here in a body – my body – only it’s now fifteen SEYS old at a push. Kilkenny, the ship’s physician, hasn’t figured out what happened, and even floated the idea that I’d been cloned, that I’m not the real me. Not sure I completely understand it myself. I had not imagined I’d return like this. No matter how old I appear, though, it has no real relevance given the gargantuan epochs I have endured. The love and hate and loneliness I’ve experienced, on a scale known to no other human. But it was necessary. Vital, even. To comprehend it all. “Who are they?” Dallas asks. “They?” I’ve drifted off again. “You said existing for millennia is possible, with what they did to you.” “The Titans. At least one of them. It’s all in the debrief,” I say, leaning back in the molded chair and pulling my bare feet into a lotus position. “When can I get out of here?” I motion to the glass barrier that separates us. “Soon, I’m sure,” Dallas says, scrawling yet another note. “Once we’re sure you pose no contamination risk. Or a physical threat to the crew.” She thinks me violent? Maybe. Though it’s hard to determine if my lust to be free, and to murder, if need be, stems from human evolution – warring apes who survived on

An onyx nothingness, forever. No sound, not even your breathing

the credo of kill or be killed – or if it is a consequence of the monster I have become, forged over the eternity of the universe in a hellish crucible of pain. So yes, I may well be violent. To achieve my goal, blood may have to be spilled, and this crew may have to sacrifice their lives. “The Titans, the Six,” Dallas presses, oblivious to the running commentary in my head. “You mention them, and say it’s all in the report, but it isn’t really, is it? There are bare bones here.” Her finger flicks across the luminous screen, scrolling through the testimony. “In fact, it seems like you’ve been purposefully cryptic.” Yes, I have been. Dallas is eager, and young. Maybe she would believe me. Maybe she’d help me. Maybe she wouldn’t. Empathy and comprehension of complex matters are usually derived through suffering. One look at this woman is all it takes to know she’s known no suffering in her privileged life. “So, why be cryptic?” Dallas asks. “Because what you understand is not important. What I have to do is.” I stand again, and the soles of my feet slap the hard metallic floor. Harsh white light presses down from an unspecific source above, penetrating my skull to make my brain ache. “Kara… can I call you Kara?” Dallas says, but doesn’t wait for my consent. “You need to calm down.” “What I need is to get out of this glass box.” She shakes her head. “That just won’t happen, unless you co-operate, Kara.” I stop dead and bore a hateful stare through the barrier and into the insufferable woman. Don’t like being called Kara. Only Father called me that. Everyone else just calls me Psomas. Or did. Didn’t they? My memories are jumbled. A horrible, churned mess of fragments. Some of it comes so clearly to me, some in short stabbing bursts. Across the expanse of time, I have seen pockets of the universe, moments to which my attention was directed. My old life, before the Six, is less than a distant recollection that surfaces like dirty foam on the sea, only to be wiped away by a crashing wave. I had to sacrifice myself and who I was to do what must be done. “Kara?” she says again. My jaw clenches, and I force a measured breath through my nose. Answer the questions, give her enough that she might help. Must get out. Before the Fulcrum. Before it’s too late. “Psomas, just call me Psomas,” I sit, and again clamp my shaking hands together. “Do I need to prove myself?” Dallas asks. “Before you’ll trust me.” She gives a practiced smile. Her wiles are lost on me, and likely she’s wise enough to know it, even at the tender age of twenty-eight – a guess, of course, a stab in the proverbial dark, but likely accurate. Wisdom is meant to come with age. I don’t feel wise, but if there is any truth to the idiom, then it would make me the wisest woman on this freighter, hell, the wisest being in this solar system, for sure – if not this galaxy, or even universe. “Do you believe you need to prove yourself, Dr Dallas?” “Sarah, please.” And there it is. Her given name. The foundation of trust, or so she believes. Pain radiates from my insides and pulses through my limbs into my fingers and toes. Sharp and cold, the very fabric of me comes undone. I clutch at my midriff and screw my eyes closed. “Are you okay? Should we call Dr Kilkenny?” Dallas asks, eyes full of concern as she watches her prize crumble. Fear, not for my life, but her career. “I’ll be fine. All things end.” I climb back to my seat. “End?” Dallas repeats, settling back into her shrink pose – leg over knee, fake smile. “Of course.” “You believe you’re dying?” she asks. “We are all dying, young lady.”