CHAPTER TWO

  A battered ship drifted through open space, its hull worn and weathered, looking like it had no business being out here at all.

  Inside the cockpit, a faint luminous figure floated near the controls.

  I changed my shape back to how I looked when I was alive. A human form. It's easier to operate the ship this way.

  It wasn't perfect — he was most comfortable holding either a human shape or the round glowing ball he'd been for centuries — but it was enough.

  Well. I got out. Now what?

  He stared out at the endless dark of space, letting the silence settle around him.

  ...Huh. Wait.

  Something had been nagging at him since he left ARO and he'd only just noticed it.

  I can read their language. All of it. When did that happen?

  He stood there for a moment processing this.

  Did I actually become less aware after spending centuries in isolation? How did I not notice that until now?

  He shook his head at himself. Among all the data he'd absorbed from the ship's database, the language had apparently just... transferred over without him registering it. At least there had been an English in the mix too — just one — which had helped him orient himself early on or else he would still be struggling to understand it.

  He glanced over at Nue, who was standing quietly at the co-pilot station.

  I wonder why I keep talking to an android like it's a person.

  "Hey Nue," Yue said, still looking out at the stars. "What do you think we should do now? I may not be the smartest, but I think we can manage. Right?"

  Nue flinched slightly — still not fully adjusted to hearing a disembodied voice appear out of nowhere.

  A pause.

  "...Ah. Yes, sir. I think so."

  Reasonable reaction. It's only been an hour since we left. Still, the way he responds feels more human than I expected from an android. Is that how advanced the technology has become?

  Whatever.

  Yue turned back to the viewport and exhaled — not that he needed to breathe, but the gesture felt right. His gaze drifted somewhere far away, somewhere that had nothing to do with space.

  His past surfaced quietly.

  He'd never really wanted much. Or more accurately — he'd wanted things, but always chose comfort in the present over effort toward the future. He knew exactly what he was doing every time he made that choice. That was the cruel part. He wasn't ignorant. He was self-aware to a fault — aware of his laziness, aware of his potential, aware of the gap between the two, and aware that he was choosing not to close it.

  He had the instincts of someone who could have gone down a very different path. Darker. More destructive. But he never did. Not because he couldn't — but because some quiet part of him refused to.

  A guy with the potential of a villain who lived an ordinary human life. What an irony.

  He didn't regret it. Not anymore.

  "Hey Nue," he said after a while.

  "Yes, sir?"

  "Back when I was alive, I figured out that to live comfortably — truly comfortably — you really only need two things."

  Nue tilted his head, listening.

  "Money," Yue said. "And power." He paused. "They're related, you know. With power you earn money. With money you can buy power. One feeds the other."

  Another pause.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  "We currently have neither."

  Nue nodded slowly, looking genuinely thoughtful for an android.

  I really need to stop being impressed by that.

  "Alright. Let's think practically." Yue pulled his focus together. "First problem — fuel and energy. I grabbed some batteries and fuel cells on the way out so we can run for about a year. But after that?"

  He floated closer to Nue.

  "We need to start mining resources. Improve our situation. Maybe get lucky and find more fuel in the process." He drifted right up to the android. "Nue, let me borrow your body for a second."

  He slipped inside.

  The sensation of having a physical form again — even borrowed — was immediately noticeable.

  This feels nice. I should build one for myself eventually.

  He pulled up the navigation system and found the map without much trouble.

  So we're here. And these are the nearest locations with human populations.

  He stared at the clusters of civilization markers for a long moment.

  No.

  He had spent centuries alone in silence. A few more centuries of that was perfectly fine with him. Beyond the comfort of solitude, there was a practical concern — Nue was valuable. More valuable than anyone who might come across them could understand. The security on the android was solid, but not perfect. Voice verification only. Anyone who figured that out could bypass it and walk away with everything Yue had built.

  Until I find a way to fix that, staying away from people — human or otherwise — is the smarter move.

  He began scanning for uninhabited areas rich in raw materials, one eye on the radar watching for pirate signatures. It took two and a half days of drifting and searching before something showed up on the scanner.

  A rock formation. Decent size — about four meters across.

  He pulled out of Nue's body.

  "Nue. You see that rock formation on the scanner? Four meters, roughly spherical. In about four minutes I need you to take it and split it open. I'll leave full ship control to you. Don't make any mistakes."

  "Understood, sir."

  Yue passed through the cockpit wall and out into open space.

  He had a secondary reason for going ahead to the rock personally. Something had been bothering him since he escaped ARO — a question he hadn't been able to answer.

  Why couldn't I pass through that asteroid? I can move through walls, through metal, through anything. But that rock held me for what felt like my entire existence. Why?

  He reached the rock and hesitated for just a moment before pushing himself inside.

  The same feeling hit him immediately. Dense. Binding. Like the space itself had thickened around his soul.

  So it is the same. This material — black ore. Used in electronics, wiring. More conductive than copper or gold. Maybe that's it. Maybe something about its properties traps energy. Traps souls.

  He tried to push back out.

  Nothing.

  ...Of course.

  He'd just voluntarily walked back into a soul trap.

  Nue will get me out. I told him four minutes. Just wait.

  He waited.

  Five minutes passed. Then ten.

  Did he get the wrong rock?

  Panic crept in slowly, then all at once.

  I just escaped from one of these. I just got free. And now because of my own curiosity I'm stuck in another one. Again.

  "NUE!"

  His shout went nowhere. Absorbed by the ore around him.

  He forced himself to stop moving and think.

  There were no other rocks nearby. I showed him exactly which one. He shouldn't have gotten it wrong. Just wait.

  To keep himself grounded he focused inward — something had shifted in him since escaping the first asteroid. He could feel it. Like his soul had adapted further, gained something new during its long imprisonment. When he turned his attention to it, he found he could interface with certain systems — simple ones. A clock. A calendar. Basic data readouts, like tapping into Nue's framework from a distance.

  He used it to track time.

  Three days passed.

  Five days passed.

  Then — a crack of light.

  He shot through it the moment it appeared, tumbling out into the brightness of open space, gasping in a way that made no physical sense for a being without lungs.

  Nue was outside the ship, tool in hand, still carefully working at the rock.

  "What took you so long?" Yue asked, keeping his voice deliberately calm. "Did you get the wrong one?"

  Nue looked up, visibly confused.

  "Sir... you're back. As you instructed, I began exactly five minutes after you entered. I did not select the wrong rock."

  Yue went still.

  Five minutes.

  He borrowed Nue's body again immediately and pulled up the logs. Every timestamp matched. Nue was telling the truth. From the outside, exactly five minutes had passed.

  From the inside, Yue had experienced five days.

  He stayed very still inside Nue's frame, processing this.

  If five days inside equals five minutes outside... then how long was I actually trapped before? The database said the Earth calendar read 50,2145 when I got out. That means I was inside that first asteroid for...

  He tried to run the calculation. The numbers were too large. His mind skipped over them like a stone across water.

  But the chill that passed through his soul said enough.

  He didn't want to think about it anymore.

  A proximity alert snapped him back to the present.

  Pirates. Nearby. Closing in.

  Are you serious? Right now?

  He didn't have time to be careful. He took direct control of the ship, bypassing the standard interface, and triggered the hyperjump drive — punching in coordinates toward the emptiest region of space he could find on short notice.

  The ship shuddered. Light bent around the hull. Then they were moving — faster than fast, cutting between folds of space like a needle through fabric.

  I used too much power. We might have two days of fuel left after this. I should have read the manual when I had free time.

  He tried to check on Nue but pulling out of the ship's systems mid-jump risked passing through the hull entirely. He stayed connected and waited.

  One day.

  Three days.

  Five days.

  This is a long jump.

  Finally, the ship decelerated. The light outside normalized. They drifted to a stop.

  Yue moved to the viewport and looked out.

  He went completely silent.

  Hanging in space ahead of them — massive, blue, impossibly familiar — was a planet.

  Is that... Earth?