Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 61982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
* * *
Evie
We get to work, and I am very excited to get in the machine. As we come in, Arkon is swarmed by juniors who need his help. He gives me a swat on the butt, tells me to be good, and sends me off to his office.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed. I want to get in the machine, but without Arkon to put me in it and get the sexy suckers all situated, I’m not going to be able to do it until he is done with whatever series of silly little tasks the juniors need him for.
As alien as this world is, and as strange as this mission city is even for an alien world, I am starting to feel very settled and normalized here. It’s beginning to be routine to come to work and come over and over again, just as I suspected it one day would be.
I am surprised when I get to Arkon’s office and discover that the machine isn’t there. What is there is Drak. I don’t know which discovery is worse.
“Where’s the machine?” I ask the question immediately.
“Congratulations.” Drak smiles at me. “You’ve graduated.”
“I have?”
“Oh, yes,” he says. “That was a training rig, obviously. From the data we’ve been gathering over the last few sessions, it’s become obvious to me that you’re outgrowing it. You’re ready for the real thing.”
Excitement builds in me. I cannot start to imagine what the real thing will feel like. The training rig felt incredible.
“I’m going to get you fitted for the real rig,” he says. “There’s not as much room in it as the training rig. So we’re going to need to take you in and get you measured up while Arkon is busy sorting out some of the peripherals.”
I am too excited to even really listen. I follow Drak out of the office and up a couple flights of stairs, through a heavily guarded steel reinforced door that has red and black stripes all along the sides. I get the feeling I am being shown a part of the facility I would never have been allowed into in a thousand years if I hadn’t proved myself.
“Is this where you keep the robot?”
Drak grins at my question. “No,” he says. “There’s nowhere big enough on this asteroid to keep the robot.”
“So it is a robot!”
He laughs, a rare display of emotion other than complete disdain for me. I think he is excited to show me what he has been working on. Secrets like these, ones that are too big to show anybody who matters, are often shown to the household pet. I feel like that’s what my status here is as far as he is concerned.
“Where is it?” I look around, wondering where he has it hidden away. I guess a door will open for a big reveal, or maybe a sheet will fall, or…
He presses a button and a screen lights up, showing us a view of the space on the darker side of the asteroid. It should be bland, devoid of much of anything. This is not a sector of space with very dramatic views.
But there’s something there.
Something so big that the orbiting camera has to pull back in order for us to see all of it.
“What is that?”
At first, all I can see are big shining planes of gold and silver and white panels, and then as the camera slides back those become outlines and take shape and…
“Is that a fucking robot?”
If it is, it is bigger than the space transporter I traveled from Earth on. It is built in the shape of a two-armed, two-legged creature. It gleams with metallic plates jointed to resemble the—I have to say it—human body. The eyes are particularly magnificent. They gleam like brilliant color shifting nebulae from inside a skull designed to look like a sentient being.
It is floating in space, but it does not seem lost. It commands everything around it. It seems to be large enough that it has its own gravitational pull, or perhaps the bright shapes orbiting it are of its own making. Or maybe they’re alien construction tech, putting final touches on. I cannot be sure, but I do know that it is one of the most beautiful pieces of engineering I have ever seen, far surpassing any simple ship.
“Not a robot,” Drak says, a rare note of reverence in his voice. “A goddess.”
“Incredible,” I breathe, more awed than anything. It’s beautiful. A work of art as much as it is a work of science. The camera pans around it, and I see details in every single part of the creature. I can see the influence of the human form in every part of it. I don’t understand why aliens would have decided to make something like this look like us.