SHORT STORY: BEYOND THE STARS

Here's all the pieces of the story.                                                                                     BEYOND THE FREEZER  -  BEYOND THE SELF  -  BEYOND THE HERD BEYOND THE FEW  -  BEYOND THE EDGE  -  BEYOND THE STARS

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Above, the sky burned with the invaders thrusters. Wide eyed stares gazed up, mesmerized. Word had been spreading throughout the sector of some unknown force conquering world after world but no one thought it would ever come this far into the galaxy. Surely, they thought, someone would have been able to defeat them by now. Unfortunately, the worst of the rumors were turning out to be true as their very own outer defense ships flew in to attack.

As the enemy advanced, the defenders would eventually turn on their own people, until all were one with the invaders. It was a terrible sight to watch as friends and relatives succumbed to the strange power of the aliens. One moment they'd be fighting right along side of you, the next they'd be trying to kill you.

*

Patty rested in his jar. So many years had passed since he'd first come to his powers and almost nothing remained of his original form. Little more than a crumb of beef, he floated in the fluids that had preserved him for so long. He wasn't sure what would happen if he were ever fully consumed. Parts of him theorized that his consciousness was now so diversified that this little scrap of meat was redundant.

His ship orbited around this final planet, the goal of his hopes and dreams. Here, he'd learned from previous conquests, was a vast archive mapping out the entirety of space. This great civilization was already ancient when the earth and moon were still forming and over the eons they'd found the farthest reaches of the universe where stars and matter ceased to be. He'd been longing for this. Gone would be the need to waste centuries in search for new horizons. At last Patty would know where every form of life could be found, and conquered.

Fires burned on the planets surface as his soldier drones marched on, converting the strong minded and leaving the rest to die. Always growing closer to where the star maps were stored.

“What's beyond the stars?” Patty's vocabulator buzzed.

A man who had been sitting on the floor beside Patty's plinth stood and gazed out the observation window. Patty selected a single human child every generation to raise without possessing it. Loneliness, Patty discovered, could drive one to insanity and it was to spare him from being alone that Patty kept his human companions. This one's name was Mary.

“Isn't that why we're here?” Mary asked.

“Hmmm,” Patty mused, “yes, but what about the thrill of discovery?”

“I don't know anything about that,” Mary said. “I was born after these worlds were found.”

True enough. Mary's predecessor, a human named Stuart, had been by Patty's side when this vast civilization had been found by Patty's scouts and the resultant war had been raging ever since. It was a shame Stuart had died before this day. He had been looking forward to it with such anticipation.

“And I wonder,” Mary went on, “what is the point of all this?”

“What do you mean?” Patty asked.

“Well,” Mary said, “you never make allies, you hardly need resources, you just conquer and move on. Why?”

Patty thought over the possibility of replacing Mary with a different human. Mary wouldn't be the first that he'd done such a thing to, but he didn't like it. He needed to answer the questions Mary was asking, and he could hardly blame her for asking them, most of his human companions did.

“Why are we here?” Patty asked more to himself than to Mary, though his vocabulator had difficulty conveying such subtlety and Mary gave him a confused look.

Before Mary could voice anything the observation window flashed, signaling that the star maps had been found and were in the process of being compared with those Patty already had.

“Move me closer,” Patty said and Mary complied, lifting his little jar from its plinth and carrying him to the railing before the window.

Proximity didn't make any real difference. Patty had others in separate sections of the ship where the schematics would actually be studied. For some reason, being close made something feel more real to him, a carryover from his humans, he wagered. Other species were far less sentimental. Perhaps that was why Patty always preferred a human companion to any of the other alien races he'd conquered. Certainly they had their uses. Warriors, builders, laborers...but it was the humans who could wonder. Other races saw the stars as just that, stars, and those that developed space travel had done so more as a matter of necessity. Humans began their space exploration out of necessity as well, but not a necessity for substance. No, humans explored out of a necessity to explore. They needed to know, needed to discover, and Patty feared...

The screen resolved and the comparison of the two star maps was clear. All that Patty had discovered was to be shone in blue, all that was new was to be shone in red. The map was blue.

Both Patty and Mary stared at the display for a long while and it was Patty who eventually broke the silence.

“Take me out of my jar,” Patty said.

“What!” Mary shrieked, “No, I can't do that.”

“You can,” Patty said wearily, “it's what you were born to do.”

Mary moved slowly and without certainty. Around her, all of the beings possessed by Patty began to weep.

“I don't understand,” Mary said as her hand rested on the lid, ready to open it. “You've won. You control the universe, everything. What's the matter?”

“There's nothing more to learn,” Patty stated, “No new horizons, no more great discoveries. Nothing more to live for.”

Mary still did not open the jar. “Why not open it yourself?” She asked and she offered the jar to one of the Patty-humans on the observation deck with them.

“I can't,” Patty said.

“Why not?” Mary asked. “You've got hands.”

“Because I'm weak,” screamed the Patty-humans as one, making Mary jump with fright. She'd never heard any of them speak before. None of the possessed spoke, not for centuries.

In her shock and surprise, Mary dropped the jar. Patty felt himself turning round and round. The fall seemed to him as an eternity, dwarfing the countless ages he'd endured leading up to this point. Everything he'd done, everything he'd accomplished, everything he regretted flashed through his consciousness. All the way back to the first moment he could remember.

It was cold. All around him lay the bodies of his fallen fellows, dead and useless. He tried to move but couldn't. Fear gripped him at the thought of dying this way, tortured and mangled by his oppressors until death. When all of a sudden a giant loomed over him, its hand reaching out to take him. Patty tried to escape, to move, but his bones were gone, they had been among the first things to be taken from him. The hand grabbed him, too hot to be comfortable but not so searing as he had expected.

“It's okay,” a familiar voice said, “I've got you.”

Patty's vision cleared and he saw Mary holding him. She was so large, and he was so small, so insignificant. How was it that he had ever conquered the cosmos. A ridiculous thing. His possessed had all collapsed, all across the universe.

“Are you okay?” Mary's voice was filled with concern.

“Amazing...” Patty managed to make his vocabulator say even though it was so far from him, “My original plan was to destroy your race.”

“I know,” Mary said, “but...you didn't, and that means something to me. I may not understand why you did everything you did, but I can't help but be amazed by what you accomplished.”

“And that,” Patty said with increasing difficulty, “is why I changed my mind.”

His body, what was left of it, was beginning to dry out and flake apart. He couldn't feel his possessed anymore and, one by one, they began to move around him as though waking from a dream. Patty hoped they'd retain at least some of his memories, some of his knowledge. Perhaps they would, perhaps not. Either way, there was an entire universe out there for them to explore.

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 I apologize this is a little late. My internet wasn't working this morning.

So here's the final installment of the Patty 'saga' (I use that term loosely). What do you think?