Log 22

The ship began hurtling through space. Everything was different from when he had boarded. The exterior looked like an asteroid, and his crew, all in stasis last he remembered, were carcasses in cargo.

He looked up the logs from everything that happened during and after boarding.

Everything looked different. It was like he was a different person, in a different place. He was even beginning to realize he thought differently - like his mind was speaking a new language.

He looked at the screen in front of him again. The letters, American Script earlier, flickered and altered to a series of lines and pricks, sticks almost, like ancient ogham. It gave him a choice. It would allow him to stay on board, alive, if he actually began to think independently. Or, it would continue on its mission, hurtling to the Sun - there it would alter the reactions in the sun just enough to destroy life on Earth, allowing the ship and its sister ships on the way to Start Again.

Log 19

She pulled up his holometric profile.

She knew his Mind and Body needed to be remodeled, topographically terraformed from the inside out to suit the new permeability of the atmosphere where they’d land, but she needed it to be him. They needed a precognizance of their relationships and data from everywhere and everywhen they’re ever been.

‘So we don’t forget,’ he said, as he had been uploaded into her ship and remodeled into its drive.

Every time she bioprinted a new body and template, he’d ask for a little change. To keep things interesting, so we don’t get bored. But she knew they’d never get bored of each other.

Log 9

She entered his data calculations after he had gone back in stasis. His holonomic projection of consciousness and accrued aggregate brainwave data was enough to help her if she needed it. His metabolism was much too high to remain with her for the duration of Klothos’s journey.

“There,’ she breathed to herself, smiling.

The wormhole didn’t work the way it had been surmised to on Earth. You couldn’t bend space and time without restructuring everything around it. With his calculations, they could use the graphene to relattice everyone’s cellular structure. They would die. But only temporarily. The consciousness could be stored more easily this way, and after a few generations of AI holding their spaghettified place in Quantum Time, they would be able to restructure and reorganize, slowly, at first, but after a few generations, most of the ship wouldn’t even remember the long journey. They would be BioOrganic again, except a few, like her and him.

Log 8

‘You’re familiar with my theorem?’

‘Of course,’ he peered into her eyes.

‘Okay, it’s like that, the data transmission. A holographic overlay. A reflection from the side of the Universe where this Wall is,’ she hushed her voice. ‘It’s mirrored. It transmits. Everything we do is reflected through the HoloPlane. It’s run through a Transmitter. The logarithms are produced. Time lines are assembled. When one outclipses the others-’ she looked at him.

‘It gets transmitted here, we relay the data,’ he paused, nodding. ‘Free Will. They have the choice to transmit new signals and physical acts and decisions. But I assume…’

‘Only so much matter and energy - so negotiations cannot be used as stalling tactics. The Holograph will overlay a physical plane, redirecting the transfer of energy, data, and matter.’

‘It builds a new layer?’

‘Exactly, like a cellular layer of reality.’

Log 7

["Time is Fluid for Her. She experiences everything Concurrently." He leaned in, "Sir, you'll have to excuse her. Her brainwaves fluctuate between what we've called 'Hell' and 'Heaven' algorithms." He paused and took a breath before continuing. "If you look at the Frequency of her thought, she dilates it. She fractals it with every bit or terrabyte we ever let out into the airwaves, into the aether, into the -"

"Is she picking up cosmic background radiation as well?" He leaned in to study her chart and the ticks and crests drawn by the needles. "This pattern mimics what our satellites just received."]

She peered over at him as he read her medical charts. ‘You printed it out?’ she asked.

He smiled in return. ‘Yea. That’s what got us here, isn’t it?’

Log 6

‘It showed me, in another dream,’ she whispered to him. ‘It called you Pale Horse,’ she added, smiling.

He looked at her and nodded, so she’d continue.

‘It showed me the Universe. A tuning fork, moving and spinning, a great tree. It mimics, us, or rather we, dendritically. Life and Death. It spins like a current, channeling the Living and Dead. It’s a series of coordinates, between their souls and ours. We can find them.’

‘Our dead crew?’

‘Yea.’

Log 5

‘I dreamt it again,’ she said, turning to him, brushing the hair off his brow. He was always groggy, always overworked, quick to turn a mood, but quicker to calm at her touch. He kissed the back of her hand and looked up at her from their bunk. She leaned in and whispered. ‘It showed me a time, a planet - I’m not sure exactly, but I think it works like a TimeCapsule. A Soul Catcher. It lives off of souls. Once you go there, you can come back again, but it takes aeons. It might be the way out. To have more time to -’

‘-Configure the numbers?’ he finished for her, hoping again.

‘Yea,’ she smiled.

Log 4

“They’re winning the war!” he screeched at her again. “Don’t you understand that?! This is a numbers game and they outnumber us. They always have!”

She turned and looked at him in The Mirror, the screen between their vessels. “Only on your side of the Simulation.” She turned back and looked at the AI, embedded in the Screen next to her. She nodded. A slight wave, a small impulse, rippled through the cabin. A slight buzz of electric current could be faintly heard, or felt, if you had the right implant, turned to the right frequency.

“Thank you, Sir,” she said to the AI’s Reflection.

“It’s not about the numbers, Johnny. It never was.” She signed off. He needed time to process.

Log 3

‘We’re almost there,’ she whispered. They were safely in the airlocked compartment: no one could hear them here. ‘It did it again. The ship told me, in my dream, what we’re doing. It’s about to enter another semblance of the wormhole.’

He looked at her.

‘That’s what it called it - a semblance. Matter’s going to crunch again. The ship - the ship’s gonna restart the logs. The crew - Johnny it doesn’t want them on board.’

‘What about us?’

‘Just us.’

Log 2

She woke back up in her bunk on the ship. “Johnny!'“ she screeched at him, leaping down and rustling him awake. “Johnny!” she whispered into his ears more urgently, so no one else would hear.

She grabbed his hand and pulled him into the corridor. She refused to let go as they hurried down the hall and into the next airlock.

Ship Log 1 of the Aporian

The Aporian System

The final corner of the Universe.

She sat in the Simulation, thinking, drawing.

Her vessel had reached the Final. The final fold in the Universe. Where Space Time ran differently. So densely nothing could pass or break through.

Her ships’ logarithms worked round the clock to identify this edge. They worked in a unified Grid, bouncing data back and forth, one ship to the other, each processing for errors and updates.