Goddess in the Machine Page 3

  Maybe the people weren’t being fatalistic at all. The villagers weren’t speaking English, but maybe that was because English had changed. Words were living things. Shifting, adapting, evolving. Growing and shrinking to fill the space. Rising to meet needs, and falling away when obsolete. How long would it take for English to become unrecognizable to her?

  “What year is it?” she asked.

  Zhade narrowed his dark eyes. “I don’t comp. It’s this year. The year after last. The year before next, if it comes.”

  “That doesn’t help.” Andra turned to the ’bot. “What year is it?”

  It groaned. The interface stuttered, a quick blip of data bytes firing, muffled calculations, and the ’display blinked back to life. A date spun in the ’bot’s open palm.

  3102.

  “No,” she breathed. “The Gregorian calendar. What year is it?”

  She waited. The ’display refreshed, but the number remained the same.

  “What’s your malfunction, you piece of empty? I’m asking for the date.” She struck the info’bot. It rang out, tinny and hollow. The mechanics inside whirred as it processed the insult, lights flashing rapidly along the exposed wires under its transparent skull.

  I apologize for displeasing you.

  But the year is still 3102.

  The ’bot was tattered and decrepit, an inch away from a mechanical death, its processing speed slower than the old data’pads in Andra’s school library, but if there was one thing a ’bot could do, it was tell time.

  She was on Holymyth, the colonists were dead, and the year was 3102.

  She hadn’t overslept by four years.

  She’d overslept by a thousand.

  THREE

  belonging, n.

  Etymology: Middle English belongen: to long.

  Definition:

  a possession.

  colloq.: a feeling of acceptance in a group or society.

  Andra was good with numbers, but she loved words. Numbers were black-and-white, never changing. One plus one would always equal two, from here to eternity, until the end of time, and the square root of 1,764 would never not be 42, and yes, Andra knew that off the top of her head. Words, on the other hand, were amorphous and fuzzy and fickle, and that made them infinitely more interesting. Words were alive. Numbers were tools.

  343,568 days since she went into stasis.

  987,432 colonists, now all centuries-dead.

  8.2 trillion miles between her and Earth.

  The numbers fell short of the reality.

  The desert felt too large. The crowd felt too close. She broke out in a cold sweat, and sand clung to her exposed skin.

  “I need to get out of here,” she gasped.

  “Certz . . .” Zhade said. “There’s . . . not many spaces to peace to . . .” He looked around, as if something would suddenly appear.

  Andra pushed past him. Her heart was racing, and blackness crowded her vision. Despite the frenzy happening in her mind, her brain seemed ultra-focused, dissecting and analyzing her new situation with brutal clarity. She ran across the ground of a desert planet, surrounded by people who thought she was a goddess, a millennium after her family had lived and died without her.

  “Wait!” Zhade called, but she didn’t listen. She had a singular focus: getting away from the gawking crowd and the stranger who’d woken her. Running from the ’bot that just told her that her family was dead, had been for a thousand years, and that Andra was alone.

  She was halfway back to the hut when a glimpse of something stopped her. Up on a hill, overlooking the village, was Andra’s empty cryo’tank.

  * * *

  It wasn’t so much a hill as it was a dune, and it took all of Andra’s remaining strength to climb it. The sand was dark orange in the late-evening light, and the sky stretched in a cloudless expanse. She collapsed next to her empty cryo’tank, which had been left in a puddle of ’protectant residue, the tubing and life-support systems lying in tangles, spilled intestines of a complex machine reduced to its basic parts. She hauled herself up, examining the open ’tank, running her fingers over the now-warm glass casing.

  She touched it almost reverently. It had held her for nearly a thousand years. That was fifty times the longest human trials. Ten times longer than her family had been in stasis. Longer than her family had been dead.

  In the distance, children squealed and shrieked as they chased an animal that looked like a cross between a fox and a dog. Colonists’ descendants playing with a space desert fox/dog in a society who worshipped her as a goddess.

  She wiped the sweat beneath her eyes and tried to puzzle out what had happened, but she didn’t have enough pieces to create a whole picture. The Lacuna Athenaeum Corporation had put together a plan to begin colonizing other planets. More specifically, Dr. Alberta Griffin, the founder of LAC and certified tech genius, had instigated everything: from cryonics to shuttles to generation ships to terraforming. To the ’bots and AI that would oversee it all. She was everything Andra wasn’t. Tall, thin, blonde, intimidating, goal-oriented. Mom had introduced Andra to her boss a dozen times, and Dr. Griffin had been impressed with Andra’s natural abilities in STEM disciplines. She was less than impressed with Andra’s disinterest in them.

  Words. That’s what Andra wanted to study. Words.

  Sweat trickled down her back, the heat suffocating, each breath sticking in her throat, right above her sternum.

  She was utterly alone—there was no one to tell her what to do, or even explain what was happening. She couldn’t rely on her mom to take care of everything, or even Acadia to boss her around. Because they’re dead, she thought. She couldn’t fix this; she could only understand, and there was only one place she could think to get any answers.

  She bent over the data’screen at the head of her ’tank. If it had kept her alive for the last thousand years, surely it would still have all its data files intact as well. She fought the urge to use her currently useless neural’implant and instead lifted the shield panel that protected the ’display. It blinked to life, and the Lacuna Athenaeum Corporation’s infinite double-helix swirled on the screen. Andra tapped the controls until she found the holo’display. Everything was recorded when it came to cryonics. A person in stasis was practically dead, completely dependent on the cryo’techs, which scared people enough to pass legislation that every cryonics company had to keep records of every moment spent in stasis. So there had to be recordings of what happened to the ’tank over the last thousand years.

  What happened to Andra over the last thousand years.

  The records folder was easy enough to find. She filtered through the time stamps, skimming through October 2161, but there, the files abruptly stopped. No records after the month she’d been put into stasis. There weren’t even any spaces where the recordings had been. It was like they had never existed in the first place.

  The squeals of the playing children faded, and a buzzing took its place. Andra stared at the empty folder long enough for the ’screen to blank and the now-holographic LAC logo to take its place.

  Not that any of it mattered—the missing files, the broken ’tank. It wouldn’t change the fact that she’d overslept, that she was abandoned on a desert planet in the future, that her family was dead. Had they lived long, happy lives without her? Had Acadia gotten five degrees and ruled the world? Had Oz grown up to become a drone racer?

  Andra had to take deep breaths to steady herself. None of this should have happened. There was no way she shouldn’t have woken up with the others, and it was next to impossible for there to be no record of what happened embedded into her ’tank. There were redundancies built into the system, checks and balances, fail-safes, protocols for every contingency.

  Except, apparently, for this. Whatever this was.

  She’d gone into stasis, flown across the galaxy, arr
ived at Holymyth, and then . . . what? Something had happened.

  The sun was getting low on the horizon. The shadows lengthened. It was still hot. There was a scuffle of sand behind her as Zhade’s friend, the one with the kind eyes, made his way up the hill. When he reached her, he sat, cocking his knees and resting his arms on them. She thought she could wait him out, ignore him until he went away. But he sat in silence, watching the children play.

  “I never wanted to come,” she said, surprised the words were leaving her mouth, that she was divulging this truth to a stranger. “Mom and I had a huge fight about it, and I was tempted to just not go through with the process. What could she do? I’d be dead by the time they found out. And instead, they—”

  She cut off, holding back tears.

  She’d argued with her mother countless times over joining the colony. To Isla, it was a given. Of course they would go to Holymyth. It was, after all, her life’s work. But it wasn’t Andra’s.

  She wasn’t sure what her life’s work would be, but it felt tied to Earth. When she told her mother this, Isla had rolled her eyes. Andra’s place was where Isla told her it was. They were a family, and they would stick together. Andra couldn’t help but think her mom’s adamance was less out of motherly affection and more about her need for control.

  Now, here Andra was, on a planet she didn’t even want to be on, alone, with no clue as to what happened or what to do next.

  She dug her heel into the sand. “They’re gone, instead,” she finished.

  The man beside her looked confused but nodded sympathetically. “Sorries, Goddess.”

  She winced. “Please don’t call me that. It’s Andromeda. Or Andra. Everybody calls me Andra.”

  “Andra,” he repeated, misshaping the vowels, stumbling over the string of consonants. “It exists an honor. I’m Lew-Eadin. Wead as a shortcut.”

  Andra wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, I’m just going to call you Lew.”

  He laughed, though she didn’t understand the joke. “Lew. Certz, then, Goddess.” He shook his head. “Sorries. Andra.”

  Below, one of the children shouted above the rest, a long string of words Andra couldn’t understand. She was starting to recognize patterns though, mining familiar syllables from the mush of elongated vowels and clipped consonants. She itched to write down what they were saying, to map it out.

  The soldier laughed at something one of the children said.

  Andra nodded to them. “How come you don’t speak like they do?”

  “I do,” he said, raking his hand through his brown curls. “But when I convo with a goddess, I speak High Goddess. I learned it from the First, as did Zhade. As did most of Eerensed, which you will hear if you come with us.”

  The children dove for the fox/dog, their smudged faces lit with intensity.

  “Come with you?” Andra murmured, but it wasn’t really a question, just an absurd idea—tagging along with strangers to a place she knew nothing about. But on the heels of that absurd idea came the realization that she was low on options.

  Lew-Eadin was quiet for a moment. “Firm, come with us. You can save us.”

  She snorted. “I’m not a goddess.”

  “So you say,” Lew-Eadin said, smiling, though he gave her a sideways look. “But, full respect, I can’t say I believe you.”

  Andra shrugged, tearing up a tuft of brown, crisp grass. “Suit yourself.”

  Lew-Eadin blinked, obviously confused by the phrase, but didn’t comment. There was movement behind them, and Andra turned to see that Zhade had climbed the hill. His hood was pulled over his head, and the bandages on his hands had been replaced with fingerless gloves. He sat, wriggling between them and kicking up a cloud of sand in the process. Andra’s eyes smarted.

  “Wead, are you talking gnats with our Goddess here?” Zhade asked, then let out a cheer as one of the children launched themself at the fox/dog and missed, the animal slithering its way through the child’s arms. He turned back to Lew. “She’s had a day and a half. Leave her resting.”

  Andra fought back an eye roll. She was starting to make sense of Zhade’s speech patterns, and if anyone was “talking gnats,” it was him. She had the feeling he wasn’t being honest or, at least, wasn’t telling the whole truth.

  “You woke me up,” she said. It was an accusation this time. He had no right. And maybe she was still a bit mad he’d seen her naked. The paunch of her stomach, the heft of her thighs. The birthmark she hated—a starburst of dense freckles, like a pointillist painting, just under the left side of her collarbone.

  “Firm,” Zhade said slowly, then bit his lip. “We’ve convoed this already. Do you have no memory? We woke you. I’m Zhade, this is Lew-Eadin. You’re the Third Goddess, the one who will save us all, stop the pockets, restore the forests and seas, which personalish, I don’t believe ever existed. Just fishes and wishes. More importantish, you’ll get me back to Eerensed.”

  She narrowed her eyes. It shouldn’t have been possible—some random person waking her up. People went to school for years to become cryo’technicians. “You understand manual technology.”

  He leaned forward. “I don’t comp what that means, but it sounds full good, marah?”

  “How did you know how to wake me up?”

  “I’m a sorcer, Goddess.” He grinned. “Best there is.”

  “Where did you learn how to open my ’tank?”

  He shrugged, his expression blank. “From another sorcer. In Eerensed. Where I once lived. Where I’m taking you now that I’ve found you, Goddess.”

  She scratched at the sand crawling down her neck. “My name’s Andra, and I’ve told you, I’m not a goddess.” She paused, cocking her head to examine him. He seemed arrogant and ridiculous, but his brown eyes were clear, sane. “Surely you can’t believe I am.”

  Zhade picked up a flat rock and twirled it between his fingers, leaning back on his other hand. “I reck you were agrave for as long as anyone has memory. I reck you could probablish perform magic beyond the best sorcer.” He leaned forward conspiratorially, his blond hair flopping over his eyes. “Which is me, beedub.” He sat back. “I reck you speak High Goddess full flawless. And I just witnessed you come back to life. If you’re not a goddess, what are you?”

  Just Andra. Twenty-second-century teenager and all-around underachiever.

  “I’m from . . . the past,” Andra said, wincing. Even to her ears, it sounded fantastical.

  Zhade let out a bark of a laugh. “Me too. I traveled here from the moment before this one.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I reck full well.”

  He watched her for a moment. Andra stared back, tugging at the tight material of the borrowed shirt where it had ridden up over her stomach.

  “I’m not a goddess,” she muttered.

  Zhade waved his hand, dismissive. “Fortunatish for me, it doesn’t import what you for true are. It’s full good that people believe you exist a goddess. The Guv will let me in if I have you with me.”

  “So I’m a bargaining chip?”

  “Neg. For certz not.” He paused. “What’s a bargaining chip?”

  “You’re using me to get what you want.”

  “Oh, then firm. You’re definitish a bargaining chip.”

  Andra stood, beating the sand off her pants. “I’m not going with you to this Ear-and-sand,” she said, though she wasn’t so sure. What other options did she have? Stay here? In this town where she didn’t speak the language, didn’t know how to survive?

  “Eerensed,” Zhade corrected. “And I resurrected you. You owe me.”

  “She literalish just woke, sir,” Lew-Eadin’s voice was bored, perfunctory, as though he were used to arguing with Zhade. His accent grew thicker, more natural. “She needs time and a half to adjust.”

  “Psh.” Zhade ducked his chin.

&n
bsp; “I don’t know you,” Andra said. “You could be anyone, and bragging about being banished from your hometown isn’t a great recommendation.”

  Zhade looked affronted, started spluttering an argument, but Andra cut him off.

  “I owe you nothing. Thanks for waking me, but I didn’t ask you to, and honestly . . .” She took a deep breath. “. . . I probably would have been better off left in that ’tank. I’m not a goddess or a sorcer or whatever, and I certainly can’t save anyone. I’m just a normal girl in a—” She laughed under her breath, kicking her foot lightly against her ’tank. “—a ridiculous situation, and all I want now is to figure out what happened to my family and try to get a ride back home—”

  Her voice caught. She swallowed, thinking of home. Of Earth.

  Earth: the blue-and-green ball hanging in space, third planet from Sol. But also Earth: the scent of rain in spring and the sound of leaves crunching in autumn. The park where she and Oz would race drones. Her favorite sushi restaurant. Getting hit with a blast of cold water when the shower temp’con glitched. The wall of pre-books in her room. Warm socks.

  One thousand years. All of that would be gone now or changed beyond recognition. She didn’t have a home to go back to. She felt the hot smart of tears welling in her eyes. Zhade didn’t notice, and Lew pretended not to.

  “I can’t go with you,” she mumbled. One tear slid free and she quickly swiped it away.

  Zhade blinked into the desert wind, then nodded seriously. “Certz, certz.” He stood up with a groan, dusting off his pants. “I was hoping, but fishes and wishes, marah? It’s your fate to decide.”

  At the bottom of the hill, there was a high-pitched cry. One of the children had stabbed a knife into the fox/dog. The animal whimpered, and the child—a girl of about six—twisted the knife until the animal fell silent. Andra gasped, covering her mouth to hold in a scream. The other children whined words she couldn’t understand.

  “I spoze her fam will have meat tonight.” Zhade didn’t look at Andra. Instead, he watched the girl haul the carcass across the desert. “If she were in Eerensed, she wouldn’t have to worry. We have full bars meat. Angels to cook for us. And a gods’ dome to protect us from pockets.”