This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2021 C. T. Rwizi

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Amazon Original Stories, Seattle

www.apub.com

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eISBN: 9781542032735

Cover illustration by Natasha Cunningham

Cover design by Alex Merto

Published in coordination with Plympton Literary Studio

Our transit through the Einstein-Rosen bridge from the Mahali system is only several minutes long. I watch as streaks of exotic matter fly past our cockpit window, idly reflecting on how our ship is like a photon speeding along a fiber-optic cable to somewhere far away. Maybe somewhere better, says the voice in my head. I don’t argue with it.

I should be a little afraid. Accidents have happened in the strange realm of the wormhole bridges. I’ve seen a ship fly into one and never be heard from again. A little fear is healthy. But today I feel . . . disconnected from everything. From myself.

“Hey, Msizi,” says my lone passenger and copilot. “Have you ever heard of the vadzimu?”

Vadzimu. Death. Again. I absentmindedly scratch the bristles on my cheeks. Flight Engineer Tariro Murisa was once an unapologetic optimist. Flowers and sunshine all day long. A soul so radiant she was almost too bright to look at. These days all we seem to talk about is death.

Maybe my grimness is rubbing off on her. The idea summons a surge of self-disgust in the pit of my stomach.

“Aren’t they spirits of the departed or something?” I say. “We call them amadlozi in isiZulu. Why do you ask?”

When she doesn’t immediately respond, I glance in her direction. In the dim cockpit, her eyes, focused on something distant, shimmer with reflections of light from outside. The dreadlock she’s twirling in her fingers sparkles blue from the active cybernetics embedded within it.

“They are more than just spirits,” she eventually says. “To the Shona people the vadzimu are almost like . . . a collective spiritual intelligence, I’d say. Each member was once an individual with unique life experiences, but they act as one when they intercede on our behalf. No bickering, no animosity. It got me thinking: Wouldn’t that be nice?”

I already don’t like this conversation. “Wouldn’t what be nice?”

“If death was actually becoming part of a coherent metaphysical whole.”

My jaw tenses. I scratch the back of my neck, running my fingers over the little scar on my nape. I once vowed I’d never turn myself into a cyborg like so many natives of Mahali Prime, but I recently paid for a very expensive neuro-ocular implant—a decision I often regret since the damned thing sometimes feels like it’s drilling holes into my brain.

I endure the discomfort, though. I have to. The implant is the only reason I’ve maintained control over the tattered vestiges of my sanity.

“Why are you talking about this?” I say. “Do you believe in spirits now?”

Tariro gives me the hooded look she reserves for when I’m being especially silly. “Do you blame me for asking these questions?”

I deflate, overcome by shame. “Tariro—”

“Never mind,” she says, ending the conversation.

In the silence that follows, we both stare at the cockpit’s HUD and track our progress through the wormhole. I imagine that we’re traveling in regular space at subluminal speed and that we’ll be trapped like this forever, just the two of us, living the present moment in perpetuity. What disturbs me is that this thought actually holds some appeal to me.

Maybe my implant has a few loose screws.

We soon emerge through a different gateway many light-years from where we started. As the rays of a new K-class star wash over us, Tariro’s eyes fill with wonder, and I’m reminded of the first time I saw her from across a crowded hallway at the AUSC academy. She has a certain relish for life I still find intoxicating.

“Welcome to Malcolm X,” she whispers. “A new home for the diaspora.”

“Beautiful,” I say.

“It is,” she replies, though it’s possible we’re not talking about the same thing. “And we’re the first humans to see it with our own eyes.” She gives me a smirk. “You should at least pretend to be happy, Msizi.”

I should be happy. I was chosen by the African Union Space Command to be the first pilot in history to visit this system. But everything has been gray and tasteless these last few months. Angst, my mothers said when I last spoke to them. Grief, said the therapist they forced me to see. Either way, it’s the sort of thing that stays with me like a ghost, that lingers, goes to bed with me, wakes up with me, dreams with me.

“Look at that.” Tariro points at the HUD, where a planet has been highlighted by a superimposed holographic tag. “Readings from the local terra nova are already coming in.”

The planet is indeed a green-and-blue orb floating in the emptiness, and by appearances alone it has an atmosphere, oceans, and photosynthetic plant life. Malcolm X-b, according to AUSC astronomical naming conventions. A human-habitable planet in the far reaches of space and the reason I was sent here. Part of my mission is to gather preliminary high-resolution data from the planet with my ship’s suite of sensors. I’m also to establish contact with the resident Architect.

Speaking of which . . .

“Funny,” I say, frowning at the dashboard. “The Architect should have hailed us by now, but there’s no incoming tight-beam transmission.”

“That is odd,” Tariro agrees. She leans forward as she searches the void beyond our cockpit. “No visual contact either.”

The Architect, an artificially intelligent near-light-speed construction ship, was sent to Malcolm X from Mahali decades ago to construct an Einstein-Rosen bridge connecting the two systems. By rights it should have been the first thing we saw when we crossed.

“Nothing on the microwave radio frequencies,” I say. “Maybe we should—”

I don’t finish that thought. Something hits our ship and my vision tunnels as we spiral out of control. Red lights flicker all over the dashboard. The HUD flashes multiple warnings, but I can’t read them because we’re spinning like a feather in a tornado and I can feel my breakfast climbing up my esophagus. An oxygen mask telescopes from behind my head to cover my face. My seat belts tighten across my chest to keep me from getting tossed about the cockpit like a rag doll. I think I’m about to pass out.

“Msizi, do something!”

“I’m trying!”

The main engine fails to respond, but the secondary thrusters ignite at the turn of a switch. Slowly, I put an end to our uncontrolled spin, and we settle at an oblique angle to the system’s orbital plane. Tariro and I almost breathe sighs of relief, but the reality of our situation soon hits us with the force of an Olorun-class warship moving at half the speed of light.

Warnings are beeping all over the cockpit. According to the HUD, chunks have been torn off the hull by whatever hit us, and the only reason we aren’t floating in the vacuum of space right now is that the ship deployed its automatic energy shields to fortify the breaches and stop further loss of air and structural integrity.

“What the hell just happened?” I say.

“The VI is unresponsive,” Tariro announces as she navigates through the list of warnings on the HUD. I want to panic, but her steady voice is reassuring, even as she keeps dashing my hopes. “Direct fusion drive is off-line. Life support and energy shields now running on backup batteries. At least the secondary thrusters are still operational. That should be enough to . . . Oh no.”

“What is it?”

“Turn the ship around.”

I don’t like the urgency in her voice at all. I hurriedly obey, engaging the secondary thrusters and swerving us around. At the sight that greets us I almost scream, but my voice box spasms and fails.

There was a gate there not a moment ago. A gate with bronze arches connecting this system to Mahali, and through Mahali to Sol and every other African Union system, and through Sol to the rest of humanity. Now there is only an expanding field of luminous gas and debris, and whatever exotic matter held the wormhole in place has evaporated away.

“What does this mean?” I manage to say.

Calculations skitter behind Tariro’s eyes. “It’s possible the bridge collapsed in on itself,” she says. “We must have been struck by projectiles from the explosion.”

“But that’s impossible,” I say, though what I really mean is, it’s too terrible to be possible. Surely the universe has more kindness for me than to allow such a thing to happen.

Except that I can see the broken remnants of the gate floating away from each other, and there are warnings still blinking all over my HUD.

I am stranded here, light-years away from civilization.

I’m dead.

I should be upset, but all I want to do right now is laugh.

“Msizi, I’m getting some interesting readings from Malcolm X-b.”

Tariro is that type of person. Rarely one to panic, always looking at the next step, the next viable solution. But I don’t take my eyes off the exploded remains of our only way back home.

“Strong isotopic biosignatures,” she continues. “Surface temperature is good. Breathable atmosphere. Air pressure might be a little thin on the surface, but they made a good call choosing this place. Secondary thrusters should have enough juice to get us there.”

I finally look at her. She meets my gaze with clarity of purpose, though I know her well enough to recognize the hint of doubt in her eyes. I’m partially inclined to scream into her face: Then what? What the hell is the point?

“Think the shields will survive reentry?” I say.

“They’re on battery power right now,” she says. “They’ll go down anyway, and if we’re still in space when that happens . . .” She doesn’t have to complete the obvious thought.

She’s a survivor. She wouldn’t want me to be anything less.

I owe it to her to try.

I turn the ship around and engage the secondary thrusters in a short and calculated acceleration burn. Malcolm X-b, here we come.

The wail of reentry hits us like a million sonic cannons going off repeatedly. The entire hull, the floor, the controls, the joints between my bones—everything shakes, bends, and stretches under the fierce mechanical stress.

Our reentry shields deploy in front of the bow in a conelike configuration, increasing our ballistic coefficient and aerodynamic drag. A sheet of fire envelops them as they take the brunt of the force. Warnings continue to beep and flash in front of us, but all we can do is sit and wait out the storm.

As the blue line of the horizon flattens, I look through the starboard windows, beyond the sheet of fire, and glimpse twinkling oceans and continents rich with foliage. The beauty of them takes me by surprise, and I’m struck with the idea that dying in these alien skies would not be such a terrible way to go.

I turn my head to face Tariro, who smiles at me with fondness. In that moment I decide that yes, if the vadzimu came for me now, I would not fight them.

Our eyes remain locked until the fires recede and the shudders cease. The heat shields draw back into a more aerodynamic profile, and many of the warnings stop blinking.

We have made it, and I should be relieved—I am relieved.

I think.

I sigh as I lean forward to take the controls. After a brief look at my instruments, I fire up the thrusters and bank us westward. It looks like we’re headed for a subtropical landmass. I try not to think about what I’ll do when we land.

An hour later I raise a hand to shield the sunlight from my eyes.

Our smoldering ship is just down the rocky hill where we left it. I can see a lake of ultramarine water over the treetops we clipped as we landed. We might be in temperate woodlands judging by the local temperature and vegetation. It’s surprisingly quiet, though. So far, I’ve only seen a critter as large as a hare and a few tiny birds. I’d have expected such a place to be crawling with life.

The sky is a spectrum of blues and pinks, and many stars are still bright enough to be visible even in the daylight. I stare at Tariro through the visor of my oxygen mask, amused by the look on her face. The last time I saw her this animated was when we were allowed to tour the vast engine room of the brand-new AUS Makeba.

She puts out a hand to catch one of the many little tufts of . . . things floating around, but it slips through her fingers, so I snatch one from the air and present it to her. I’m mildly annoyed when it dissolves on the palm of my bare hand into a mucuslike substance. She laughs at me as I wipe the muck off on the thigh of my green jumpsuit. I make a face at her.

“I know this is a terrible situation,” she says, “but is it wrong that a part of me is glad I got to see this?”

I fold my arms, surveying the vista in front of us. Even I can admit that it’s beautiful. My eyes track a winged creature as it glides over the treetops. Were it not for its brightly colored plumage, I might have thought it an eagle. In fact, this alien world feels strangely familiar. “Think it’s safe for me to take off my mask?”

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Tariro says.

“I can’t wear it forever. And you seem fine.”

She sighs, her eyes falling to the ground. “Msizi—”

“I know, I know. You’ve got all kinds of tech inside your body. You could probably walk in the vacuum of space without a suit and live to tell the tale. Damn cyborg.”

She looks at me, and I glimpse the almost-translucent circuits embedded in her corneas. Beneath them I see a pity so deep I have to pull my gaze away.

“Sheesh,” I say. “It was a joke.” I can’t stand it when she looks at me like that. “I think I should head back to the ship and see if I can’t get an uplink to the Architect.”

I start to walk away, but I feel her eyes following me.

I know I’m running. She wants to talk, but I’m not ready for that conversation. I don’t think I ever will be.

My boots slide on loose rocks as I descend the hill, and I barely manage to keep my balance. My throat feels tight for some reason; I think I need a glass of water. Or a cold beer. That would be nice. My hand feels funny. I lift it up, and my mouth falls open in shock because the whole limb is swollen and I can’t feel it anymore.

My knees buckle and I fall, still staring at my mutating arm. I start wheezing for breath. I’m on the ground now. A shadow falls over me and I look up. I see Tariro’s outline, the electricity in her dreadlocks, the horror in her beautiful dark eyes. I blink, and for a moment I think she has disappeared, my vision playing tricks on me, but then she’s back again, crouching down next to me.

“What’s happening?” I try to say.

I feel her cradling me. She has not touched me in such a long time. Is this because I’m dying? There is panic in her voice. She says something about anaphylactic shock, and do I have epinephrine?

I think I do. It’s in the first aid kit back on the ship. But I can’t speak and I can’t breathe.

Tariro, there’s something I need to tell you. I wish . . .

“Shh,” she says. “I know.”

I will die on this planet. But that’s okay, because I’m in the arms of an angel.

As my vision blackens, I wonder if I’ll join the vadzimu after all. I pray I’m not too far away from Earth for them to take me.

I watch the explosion from a viewport. My world ends right before my eyes, and I can’t do a thing about it. I’m too far away. This is all my fault.

I crack my eyes open and see a pink-and-blue sky moving above me, stars so bright they shine like fireflies. My head lolls to the side, and I should be surprised by the strange girl pulling me in a gravitronically levitated cart, but I feel nothing. Her braids seem to flow with the wind and stretch on for miles. Her dark skin has electric-green markings of a design I have never seen before.

An angel. My angel.

Tariro.

I was the surly Martian scholarship student with a massive chip on his shoulder, intimidated by the natives of Mahali, and she was the brilliant engineering student with a billion friends and a limitless fountain of optimism.

Neo-Africans, we call them.

They grow up under Mahali’s soft light, on a rich world with a clean atmosphere, a mild climate, and lots of positivity about the future. Always cheerful and quick to embrace radical new technologies. The rest of the diaspora likes to sneer at their carefree and hypermodern ways, but in truth, we envy them their freedom from the weight of our common history.

History can be a burden sometimes.

I should know. Growing up on a Martian arcology as a third-generation immigrant from South Africa, I was neither among the wealthy founding families nor was I among the desired demographic of settlers. It never quite felt like my home world wanted me, a curse many Africans in the diaspora have never truly escaped.

Neo-Africans know none of that crap. Their colonial legacy, the historical woes Old Africa and its peoples faced—all of that is as distant to them as Andromeda viewed through the lens of a high-powered telescope. A thing for the museums and the history books, to be occasionally remembered for the sake of knowing their origins, but they lack the personal context to truly understand it.

I felt out of place during my first few months as a cadet at the academy on Mahali Prime. The hallways seethed with smiling faces and confident people who behaved as though the universe lay in the palms of their hands. They knew they belonged in these illustrious halls, and they acted like it. My insecurities made me a moody asshole, so most of my colleagues kept their distance. Then Tariro came to my table in the mess hall one day, sat down across from me, stared me in the eye, and said, “You and I are going to be friends. Whether you like it or not.”

And that’s the thing about her. She’s great at everything she touches, even me. Sometimes I can’t believe my luck. Sometimes I . . . sometimes . . .

I open my eyes. I’m lying on a bed in a room with white walls and beeping machines. My arms and legs are a little numb. Apart from that, I feel surprisingly fine.

She’s here. The strange girl. Who is definitely not Tariro. And her braids aren’t nearly as long as I thought—I must have been hallucinating—but there’s definitely some kind of strange tech marking her skin in eye-catching patterns that glow green. She’s watching me like she wants to dissect me. Or inject me with arsenic. I test myself and find that I have the strength to sit up, so that’s what I do. I almost cry in relief when I see Tariro sitting on a chair next to my bed.

“What happened?” I say to her. “Where are we?”

Her eyes crinkle, though they look a little red. “Turns out this planet isn’t as vacant as we thought,” she says. “There’s a whole civilization of settlers and terra formers who came before us. How are you feeling? You’ve been out for days.”

Days? This planet has settlers?

“Do you speak Swahili?” says the strange girl, startling me with the solidity of her voice. I blink at her, almost forgetting that she asked me a question.

“I do,” I reply, also in Swahili.

“What’s your name? I’m Aluel.”

“Flight Lieutenant Msizi Dube of the African Union Space Command. Aluel, you said? It’s nice to meet you.”

Her name sounds Nilotic; South Sudanese would be my guess. Even her blouse of cascading strings of colorful beads seems vaguely Sudanese of origin. How the hell is she here?

“I retrieved you from your vessel after the Elders alerted us to your presence,” she tells me. “You were in physical distress, but we managed to stabilize you.”

I glance at Tariro, who remains silent. “Thank you for saving my life,” I cautiously say to Aluel.

She peers down at me again like she wishes she could peel off my skin to see what’s beneath it. “You crossed through the wormhole before its destruction, yes?”

The first alarm bells start ringing inside my head. “What do you know about that?”

“Please answer the question.”

“Yes. But—”

“Then it is as we feared,” Aluel says, cutting me off. “I must report this to the council.” Without another word she turns around and leaves the room, the door shutting closed behind her.

“Hey! Wait a minute!” I get off the bed to follow her, but the door is locked. I bang on it a few times. “Aluel!”

Tariro hasn’t moved from her chair. She has a wistful look about her. “She’s very pretty, isn’t she?”

I frown, pretending I didn’t notice and ignoring the spasm of guilt that grips me. “Your point?”

“I’m just saying. There’s nothing wrong with keeping your eyes open.”

A sharp pain moves through my chest like heartburn. “Tariro, let’s not do this, okay? Not now.”

She watches me as I return to my bed and flop down face-first, overcome by a wave of self-pity.

“I just want what’s best for you, Msizi,” I hear her whisper, but I can’t bear to look at her.

Aluel returns an hour later and stands woodenly by the doorway.

“I have been commanded to answer your questions and put you at ease,” she says, though the look on her face suggests she’s acting against her will and would have rather gone down the vivisection and experimentation route. “Shall we take a walk?”

Thank god she’s not the one in charge around here.

We walk outside my little white prison, and what I see as we step into the daylight makes me do a double take.

There are mud-brick huts. I also hear the bleating of goats and the lowing of cattle. It’s the sort of idyllic village you’d expect to find on an East African cultural preservation site—I’ve been to one just like it on Mahali Prime, except the people living there were actors for the most part, the buildings were taller, and the smell of dung wasn’t nearly as pungent.

This is an actual village that actual people live in.

But as Tariro and I follow Aluel along a pathway paved with slabs of variegated stone, between what look like palm trees with veins of green crystal twisting up the trunks, I begin to understand that not all is what it seems.

The huts have windows of electrified transparent wood and curved frames of composite materials supporting shaded porches. The sleekest worker bots I’ve ever seen are zipping all over the place, hovering on gravitronic stabilizers that barely give off a hum. When we pass a hut with an empty goat pen, I see one such worker bot weeding a flower bed with one arm while planting a seedling with another. A child sitting on the steps to the hut’s porch stares at us, a piece of sorghum pancake halfway to her mouth. There is a conspicuous green strip of cybernetic tech running down her face; it pulses with an aura when I smile and wave at her. She gives me a shy grin in return, showing multiple gaps in her teeth.

“This place makes no sense,” Tariro says, echoing my thoughts. “I detect an extensive power grid running beneath us, but I cannot tell you where that power is coming from or how it’s being generated, and I’m a damned good engineer.”

Not everyone is as friendly as the child, however. A whiff of danger in the air makes me look over my shoulder, and I’m not surprised to see the group of four men cloaked in plaid shuka blankets tailing us from a distance. There’s nothing overtly ominous about them, but I think those bulges by their sides might be holstered firearms.

I turn back ahead and try not to betray my unease. “Those men behind us don’t seem very friendly.”

Aluel doesn’t look, like she already knew they were there. “Your arrival has caused a stir,” she says. “There are factions who believe you present an opportunity. There are others who would see you dead. But you are safe for now, so don’t worry. Your fate has not yet been decided.”

“For now?” I say. “That’s not very reassuring, Aluel.”

Her face remains placid. “I don’t know what else to tell you.”

I trade looks with Tariro. A touch of worry has entered her eyes, but I can tell she’s less troubled about the possibility of being executed than the prospect of dying without learning more about the unexpected inhabitants of this planet.

That’s Tariro for you. Academic curiosity even in the face of death.

Perhaps it’s time to ask our host some questions. “Maybe you can tell me about you and your people,” I say to Aluel. “How are you here? We did not expect a human presence in this system.”

Aluel is surprisingly candid in her response. “My ancestors were like-minded agropastoralists from across the Nile valley on Old Africa. They arrived here a hundred years ago after a long voyage from an Earth ravaged by climate change and dwindling resources.”

I nod as I begin to make sense of it. Aluel’s people were one of those intrepid groups who left the Sol system at sub-light speeds during the dawn of the interstellar age, before the invention of Einstein-Rosen gateways. Back then, the technology of interstellar travel was still crude and unreliable, and accidents were frequent. None of those first groups had been heard from since, at least not until now. Most were presumed lost in space. They had so many technical and psychological challenges to surmount that their odds of success seemed slim.

And yet somehow Aluel’s people made it.

She indulges a slew of other questions, and I find out that this planet has people from various ethnic groups of Nilotic origin, including Maasai, Kalenjin, and Dinka. They live in cities and villages across the continent, and though they once organized themselves by ethnicity, today the greatest divisions among them are philosophical.

“What do you mean?” I ask her.

Her tone becomes hesitant. “Let’s just say we have different ideas about the future of our world, and our differences grow deeper by the day. Your arrival will not make things easier. But we have digressed, I think.”

I’m intrigued, but I allow her to change the subject.

“When we first landed on this world,” she says, “many of us fell ill, just like you did, and sadly, some of us died. At first our scientists could not figure out why. They had tested the planet before we landed and administered the appropriate therapies for our quick adaptation to the local biosphere.”

My attention strays as I notice the strangest roots spidering across the grass-covered ground, snaking over and under each other as they converge upon a tree standing tall in the middle of a secluded garden. Both the tree and its roots look like they’re made of solid crystals sparkling with green electricity in their interiors.

I study Aluel unabashedly, taking a closer look at her face markings. I could swear it’s the same tech. She doesn’t seem to notice and instead gazes at the crystal tree with reverence.

“It wasn’t until those who were still sick unexpectedly recovered that we understood what was happening,” she says. “The Elders were intervening.”

I think I hear a faint ringing that grows as we approach the tree, like the sound of glass splintering under strain. It has no leaves, and is almost like a baobab in structure, though not nearly as tall. I’m not sure it’s a living thing.

“What am I looking at?” I ask.

“The Elders are a distributed consciousness, Flight Lieutenant. Nodes like these are where they are best able to communicate with us.”

“But who are the Elders, Aluel?”

For the first time since I met her, Aluel smiles. “An intelligent life-form local to this planet.”

The ringing in my ears intensifies. Perhaps it’s the echo of my shock. I look at Tariro, who has said nothing this whole time, and she’s nodding like everything makes sense now. It certainly doesn’t to me. “I’m sorry, Aluel, did you just say there are intelligent aliens on this planet?”

In all the centuries of human exploration, the Fermi paradox has only grown more intriguing. No extraterrestrial intelligent species have been encountered anywhere. Ever. The presence of intelligent aliens here would be explosive.

Aluel regards me like I’m an ignorant child. “It is we who are alien, Flight Lieutenant. The Elders were here before us. This is their home. But they accepted us when they recognized we had peaceful intentions. They are the reason we are able to survive on this planet.”

My tongue feels like it’s been glued in place. I am standing next to a literal alien intelligence. “What do you mean they are the reason you’re able to survive?” I dumbly ask.

“Local plant species release spores that trigger lethal immune system reactions in humans,” Aluel explains. “These spores are everywhere and virtually impossible to neutralize. Only by accepting a symbiotic relationship with the Elders are we able to acclimate to this world.”

I am stunned. “So how did you treat me?” I ask, half hoping she won’t answer. “Are you saying the Elders are inside me? Is that why your face . . . Will I become like you?”

I could swear she’s laughing at me behind her eyes, but Aluel’s expression remains neutral. “Only if you wish,” she says. “Beyond the necessary changes to your immune system, integration with the Elders goes as far as you want it to.”

Well, that’s a relief, although the idea of any integration at all with alien life-forms leaves me queasy.

But I begin to feel better as Aluel takes us around the rest of the village, and by the time she leaves us to do some exploring on our own, I’ve moved past my concerns. It certainly helps that the men from before have stopped following us, and by appearances alone, the locals seem well-fed and happy despite being hosts to alien parasites.

“Symbionts,” Tariro corrects me when I voice this thought to her. “Parasites are harmful. These Elders seem benevolent, and by the looks of it, they’ve gone beyond just keeping Aluel’s people alive. Look at the technology running this place!”

We leave the village perimeter and hike up a rocky outcrop with a view of the settlement and its grainfields and the grasslands that surround it. Together we sit in companionable silence as the sun moves lower in the pink-and-purple sky.

“Is that a fence?” Tariro asks, pointing at the telltale shimmer of an energy shield some distance behind a lumbering herd of cattle. “To keep out predators, perhaps?”

I release a groan. “Alien parasites are enough for one day, Tariro. Don’t make me think about alien predators.”

She laughs, a pleasant sound that warms my heart.

“In all seriousness, though,” she says, “of all the places to get stranded, this is pretty great.”

“They might decide to kill us,” I remind her.

“I have a feeling they’d have done so already,” she says. “Why bother saving your life only to take it again?”

I lean back onto my elbows, stretching my feet out in front of me. I know my predicament hasn’t fully hit me yet, and I know I’m due a panic attack, but for now I’m fine just sitting here and enjoying Tariro’s company. “I suppose things could be worse,” I admit.

“The only thing missing now is a cold glass of beer,” she says with a longing look.

I was just having that same thought. I open my mouth to agree with her, but stop in my tracks. I get off my elbows and stare at her. “Tariro, you’ve never liked beer.”

She looks back at me, surprised. “Really?”

“Yes. You hate the taste of beer. You once told me you’d sooner die than take another sip of that ‘vile toilet water.’ You only ever drink wine.”

She becomes distant and troubled. “That’s . . . odd. I could swear . . .” When her eyes flick back to me, I immediately regret saying anything. “Msizi, I think we need to talk.”

I shoot up to my feet. “No. No we don’t.”

“We can’t avoid this forever.”

I’m already walking away. “Yes, we can. It’s easy. We just don’t talk about it.”

It’s like déjà vu, I’m walking away from her and suddenly my windpipe starts to collapse into itself. I try to suck in some breath, but my body won’t cooperate. Tariro screams something, but it’s like she’s ten miles away. I’m choking again. I’m dying again.

A shadow covers my eyes, and I fall into an abyss.

I’m back in the white chamber when I wake up. Unlike the first time, though, there are tubes sticking into my nostrils, and my lungs feel like they are flooded with water.

I blink and see Aluel’s face hovering over my bed. She wanted to dissect me the first time she saw me, but the worry on her brow says she might actually be concerned for me now.

“What happened?” I ask.

She ponders her response, like she’s about to broach a difficult subject. “The . . . presence you’re always talking to,” she says delicately. “Are they here?”

I feel a spasm somewhere deep inside my soul. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.

“I’ve seen you talking to yourself, Flight Lieutenant. I thought you might be insane, but the Elders say there’s a foreign and incompatible object inside your body and they can’t integrate with you until it’s gone. Our surgeon can remove it if you give the word.”

I have lived with a constant sense of terror for a while. It’s never far away, but I learned to keep it at bay, to work around it so it wouldn’t cripple me. It takes me now, washes over me so completely, it leaves me shaking. “You mean my neural implant? I can’t. It’s organic. It needs to be inside me or it’ll deteriorate.”

“Msizi—” Tariro begins, but I cut her off.

“Out of the question.”

I feel her hand on my shoulder. I look at her through the moisture rapidly covering my eyes. “Msizi,” she says in a voice that almost breaks me. “You have to take it out.”

“No.”

“You have to do it. For me.”

“But you’ll die!”

“I’m already dead!” she says. “I died in the accident, Msizi. This? It’s just a pale image of me, and it’s holding you back, keeping you from living your life, and right now it’s literally killing you. You need to let go.”

I would kill to make this all go away. To bring her back. To not have to let go. “I can’t! I’m not ready.”

I feel her phantom hands gripping my arm, a sensation simulated by my neural implant, driven by the virtually intelligent avatar of her that I stole from her messenger account in the days following the explosion of the AUS Nkrumah. I was stationed on a nearby cruiser when something went wrong with the Nkrumah’s new antimatter drive, and I watched it explode from a viewport, knowing that Tariro was in there and that I’d never see her face again.

She had many more layers of personhood than this VI—a stronger personality, a brighter soul—but it’s all I have left of her, and the idea of losing her again and this time forever . . . I’d rather die.

“Msizi,” she says, cutting through the noise of my sorrow. “I’m being overwritten. Slowly, your implant is taking after you, modifying my code. Soon I’ll only be a reflection of you, nothing more. I don’t want that for you, and I don’t want that for me either.”

And there it is. The other truth I’ve been running from.

Being inside my head is erasing her. I’m holding on to her memory so tightly I’m warping it, distorting her from the person she was to a shallow counterfeit polluted by my own flawed thoughts and feelings.

She deserves better.

“We’ll need to perform the procedure soon,” Aluel says, but I’m looking into Tariro’s eyes, finally looking and recognizing the truth of her words.

I have to let her go.

I’ve known this for a while, of course, but knowing something and accepting it aren’t always the same.

“Give me a moment, will you?” I say.

Aluel nods and leaves the room.

I can’t recall ever shedding so many tears, but they pour out of my eyes with abandon. I feel like I should be ashamed, but I can’t be bothered to care.

“Scooch over,” Tariro says, and I wordlessly make space for her on the bed.

She lies down facing me, and despite the liquid shimmer in her eyes, she smiles as she caresses my cheek. I can almost feel her touch.

We’d had a fight that morning. I don’t remember the last thing I said to her. I know I said it in anger.

“I’m sorry I was mad at you,” I say. “I don’t even remember what we were fighting about.”

A tear spills out of her eye. “We were going to make up anyway, so don’t worry about it.”

“But it’s not fair.” I almost reach out to wipe her cheek before I remember: I can’t touch her, even though she can occasionally touch me. “It’s not fair, Tariro.”

“I can’t say that it’s fair, Msizi. I don’t have the answers.” She smiles at me through her grief. “But I died knowing that you loved me, and that was all I needed to know.”

I weep in her arms. I drain myself of all the pain I’ve kept inside me. I empty myself.

And then I fall asleep.

I’m alone in the room when Aluel returns. With her is an unfamiliar woman wearing white scrubs.

“Are you ready, Flight Lieutenant?” Aluel says.

Once again I entertain the notion of letting myself die. “What’s the point?” I ask. “My death would solve your problems.”

She shakes her head. “That is not our way. Your fate has not been decided. We cannot let you die if we can avoid it.”

Tariro wouldn’t want me to give up. That’s the only reason I decide to hang on. “Go ahead,” I say and let them put me under with general anesthetic.

The surgery doesn’t even leave a scar.

Afterward, I bury the implant beneath a tree outside the village. A group of children follow me but keep their distance, watching me like I’m an interesting but potentially dangerous animal. I pay no attention to them as I sit next to the shallow grave and lose myself in my sorrow.

When a person becomes so much of your identity, who are you without them? All the friends I made at the academy were through Tariro. She helped pick out the academy tattoos I inked onto my shoulders. I developed a taste for Mahali’s eclectic music because of her. She drew me out of my shell, took an insecure Martian and turned him into a self-assured Neo-African who felt like he belonged.

She made me love myself, if only because she loved me.

It’s almost sundown when Aluel comes to my tree. I’m beginning to think that what I initially interpreted as hostility was perhaps simple curiosity. Maybe with some apprehension mixed in. I can’t say I blame her. After all, she did see me talking to myself.

“Now that your integration has succeeded,” she says, “a member of the planetary council would like to speak with you.”

I get up, dusting my dirty jumpsuit with my palms—I’m going to have to ask for some new clothes at some point. “Planetary council? That sounds serious. What do they want to talk about?”

Aluel doesn’t flinch from my gaze. “Your future.”

Not ominous at all.

I follow her to the village center, where a middle-aged man and a wizened old woman are seated, waiting for me, though only the man is a physical presence, while the woman is a hologram projected from a drone hovering above her head.

I stand stiffly before them while Aluel introduces me by my full name and title, speaking in a language unfamiliar to me. Dholuo, perhaps. She switches back to Swahili when she introduces the two strangers. The man is her uncle and the leader of this village, while the woman is Councillor Achieng, a member of the planetary council and probably one of the most important people on this world.

As soon as the introductions are complete, the holographic councillor gets straight to the point, speaking in her native tongue, which Aluel translates for me into Swahili.

“Young man, I will not lie to you. Those who wish for your death have the majority in the council. If they have their way, a poison will be administered to you in your sleep, and you’ll quietly fade into the dark. There are worse ways to die.”

I almost laugh. “I suppose I needn’t have bothered with the lifesaving surgery your people just gave me.”

“They were acting under my orders,” the councillor confesses. “I hoped your successful integration with the Elders would make my colleagues adopt a . . . softer approach toward you, but that was not the case. They are determined to ignore the significance of your arrival and wish you a quick death so they can return to pretending that the rest of humanity does not exist.”

I study the woman, and I’m intimidated by the cunning I see in her eyes. “I’m guessing you feel differently,” I say, hedging.

“I do. But first you need to know the truth. It was we who sabotaged your wormhole gate by rigging it to explode. We intended to simulate an accident so that your people would think the gate had failed, but we must have miscalculated. We certainly did not anticipate that a ship would manage to cross through so quickly.”

Before I can process this shocking information, the councillor continues to speak. “We also decommissioned the ship that built the gate—I believe it called itself the Architect. We let it go as far as it did only because we discovered it possessed limited FTL communication capabilities and figured your people would be alerted if it failed to report back. We decided it would be better to incapacitate it after the job was done.”

The expectant stare she gives me is a sign that she wants me to say something. But I’m so astonished I can hardly think. Do these people have any idea how much this project cost, the time it took, the effort? “But why would you destroy the gate?” I say.

Aluel’s uncle answers my question like he’s accusing me of something. “To stop precisely what has happened: the arrival of strangers on our planet,” Aluel translates.

“What he means to say”—the councillor follows up in a less confrontational tone—“is that we came here to build a home and a future for ourselves free from the burdens that faced us on the Old Continent. We still remember how we were disenfranchised and made lesser on our own lands, first by foreigners, then by our own leaders. We remember how our air and water were polluted, our ways of life disrupted by climate change. Greedy nations and corporations plundered the earth while leaving us to languish in poverty, and the fear is that if the rest of humanity discovered this new world and its wonders, they would do the same here.”

I . . . understand them, actually. I was ready to go off on them for stranding me here, but the rational part of me can’t blame them for protecting themselves. Still . . .

“Things have changed,” I tell them. “I understand how you feel, but the troubles that faced our people back on Earth don’t have to follow us out here. Our people have done amazing things since you left.”

“I believe you,” says Councillor Achieng. “Your presence here—the gate your people built—is proof that much has changed since we left, and there are those of us here who understand that we lose much by continuing to avoid our brethren based on outdated prejudices. We must investigate for ourselves and determine whether we can safely rejoin humanity or whether we should keep away.”

There is an opportunity here somewhere. I just can’t see the full shape of it. “Why are you telling me this, Councillor?”

She sits forward in her chair like she’s a judge delivering a verdict. “I cannot allow your execution. I will not stick my head in the sand while the universe closes in on us. Sooner or later more of your people will come to investigate, and if we are not careful, if we show ourselves to be overly hostile, we could invite war to our planet and lose everything. I will be sending you back home on one of our ships, Flight Lieutenant. You will travel together with Aluel, and she will see for herself the current state of humanity and report back to us. My hope is that one day your people and mine can enjoy peaceful and normalized diplomatic relations. But for this to happen, we have to start somewhere.”

I’m eager to go back home, but the thought of floating across space for decades while sleeping in a cryostasis pod isn’t very appealing. I might also be imagining things, but I could swear I feel a tremor beneath my feet. “I am honored,” I say. “But . . . by the time I arrive, many years will have passed. I’ll be as much a stranger to this future society as Aluel.”

It wasn’t my imagination. The source of the tremor I felt casts a shadow across the village as it flies over us, a crescent shape threaded with green crystal and engines giving off a white-hot glow.

A ship. And not like any I’ve ever seen. It slows as it lands beyond the village perimeter, and I don’t take my eyes off it until it has vanished behind a building.

“The Elders helped expand our knowledge of the workings of space and time,” says Councillor Achieng. “That ship has the means to get you back to your home system within a matter of days.” She smiles as the amazement spreads across my face. To Aluel, she says, “Prepare yourself, my child. You will leave in the morning.”

A humanoid worker bot with bright green eyes carries Aluel’s luggage onto the ship. I rearrange the new shuka blanket draped over my shoulders as I watch her bid her family goodbye.

My eyes wander to my exposed shoulders, and I can’t decide whether to smile or frown. When I woke up this morning the lines of my academy tattoos had changed color to an electric green. I think I’d be annoyed if they didn’t look so great.

Aluel comes over with the hint of a smile on her lips. I think she’s actually excited about our trip. “Are you ready?”

“To fly home in an FTL ship?” I say with an almost manic laugh. “I was born ready.”

The interior is a wonderland of green alien tech and minimalistic design. The cockpit has no control column, and the dashboard is entirely holographic. I feel a twinge of sorrow knowing how much Tariro would have loved to see this.

“So you know how to fly this thing?” I quip as I settle down on the seat next to Aluel.

“Of course,” she answers matter-of-factly. She’s already operating the holographic interface, a frown of concentration creasing her forehead. I shake my head as a holographic control column manifests in front of her and she takes ahold of it with both hands.

She pauses, giving me an odd look. “I hope you appreciate the sacrifice Councillor Achieng is making for you. She’ll probably lose everything for her betrayal of the council.”

“Your uncle didn’t seem very pleased about it either,” I point out.

“He doesn’t agree with her decision, but he’s loyal to her. You’re lucky you crashed close to this village, Flight Lieutenant. Anywhere else and you’d probably be dead by now.”

I don’t feel so lucky, but I get her point. “I’m grateful for my life, Aluel. And you can call me Msizi.”

“I didn’t mean to accuse you of ungratefulness.”

“It’s all right,” I say. “I understand.”

She nods, and in short order we lift off the ground, shooting up into the skies. The whole time I barely feel a shudder. We’ve almost reached the outer edge of stratosphere when a hologram appears in front of us, wearing a look of cautious optimism.

My heart stops beating. I look to Aluel, wondering if I’m going mad.

“I see her too,” she breathes.

“Tariro?” I whisper to the hologram.

“Not quite,” the hologram replies, her tone strangely formal. “We are the avatar of what your people call the Elders. For many years we have been searching for a way to communicate directly with your species, to learn your song so we may sing together, but something was always missing. We found it in the gift you offered to the soils that sustain us.”

My throat feels scratchy. “The implant I buried,” I blurt out.

“That’s her?” Aluel asks me, her voice full of awe.

I can’t speak anymore, so I nod.

“She’s talking to all of us,” Aluel whispers. “The Elders are actually talking! With words!”

“We apologize if taking this form has caused you offense,” says the hologram. “Your friend’s memories are part of us now, and we hoped to give you comfort before you left our world so that you knew a part of her continues to live on within us.”

I wipe my eyes, but those damned tears won’t stop coming. I want to yell at the Elders. I want to embrace them. “Thank you,” I say, meaning it.

Not long ago Tariro asked me if I believed in the vadzimu. I’m not sure I do, but here she is, part of a benevolent collective, bridging the communication gap between two different species, perhaps for the first time in history. She would be so proud.

I feel a hand on my forearm. Next to me, Aluel has tears in her eyes too. “Flight Lieutenant—Msizi. Your friend has given my people a gift we cannot ever repay.”

I laugh, despite myself. “She has a habit of doing that.”

“Then you were truly blessed to have known her.”

I could not agree more. My heart is both full and empty. I feel light for the first time in a long time.

“Are you ready?” Aluel says.

I give her a smile and relax into my seat. “Fire away.”

She moves the control column, and together we jump into interstellar space.

About the Author

C. T. Rwizi is the author of Scarlet Odyssey and Requiem Moon. He was born in Zimbabwe, grew up in Swaziland, finished high school in Costa Rica, got a BA in government at Dartmouth in the United States, and currently lives in South Africa with his family. C. T. is a self-professed lover of synthwave.