Ch 16: Ni Vivas

The Futureness Part Two

Mar 05, 2025

On the sidewalk before the entrance to the hardware store the rocket ship kiddie ride is broken. In my dream, a kid sits on the toy, blue jeans and a soccer team hoodie, bucking and trying to get his two quarters to start the rocket. He kicks his short legs, rattles the handles that he should be holding on his way into outer space, but the thing won’t run. Moments of struggle pass, the clouds above shift, and the sun is released upon the earth, burnishing the ride and the boy and enveloping them in an orange-white haze of static.

Alarms sound. A shrieking bell that the Theian, drawn and nearly translucent, silences with a wave. I’m awake, afloat in the Theian’s space. Blackness dotted with faint stars. I hear a word in a voice not of the three of us.

“Ni vivas. La bellevrites…”

What’s the situation

It was Francesca’s voice, but less modulated. The sound of it reminded me of her voice under the hack my father put on her, monotone and robotic. I worried about our basewater levels.

“Where are we?” I asked Francesca.

The Theian said to no one in particular, “All I see is just more of the same thing.”

“Fran, what does it mean?”

Rich, we are outside the Metasoma now. This might be the other side

The dim, distant stars and the floating, mute night.

“More of the same thing,” said the Theian. “Stars, gas. Some basewater, but none nearby. We didn’t make it.”

“La bellevrites, la bellevrites… Francesca, Rich... La bellevrites…,” continued the voice.

“We are still in space-time,” the Theian said. “We’re on the precipice of the main Metasoma. Your signal made us exit,” said the Theian.

“What signal?”

The Theian turned and fixed me with a sickening stare.

“Noise from Earth,” she said.

Where war, she claimed, was breaking out over us somehow.

“Ni vivas…”

“Fran, is this Methyl talking?”

“Ni loĝas en kaverno nomita Karl.”

It sounded like an emergency announcement, meant to be read and repeated, again and again until the danger cleared.

“The war?” I asked anyone who might answer.

“It’s on Earth, not here,” said the Theian. “You saw from our mark back on Earth. The launch site. Humanoids still worship you. But there can never be war with cargo.”

I could translate the first transmission, Rich. It’s Esperanto, but in a form that I wasn’t trained on

“Always switching languages is what kept you on Earth,” the Theian said quietly.

“Can you translate?” I said to Francesca.

Rich, we are at least twelve hundred light years from Earth—

“We are one thousand two hundred and thirty-one light years from your planet-killing home,” said the Theian. “Earth destroyed Theia and now it’s destroying itself, predictably.”

Rich, it’s approximately twelve hundred years since we left Earth, in our years. The distance we have gone, with time dilation—

“What year is it on Earth?”

Probably year 3,276

“Probably?”

Probably approximately, Rich

“You’ll understand, now, why we had to give you immunity to natural death,” the Theian said.

“We didn’t cause Theia to collide with Earth,” I said.

The instant the pain signals came, I routed them outside my immediate thoughts, the Theian’s power over my, or whatever was left of my body, had diminished, as she and Francesca continued to dwindle.

The fourth voice came again: “Nomita Karl. Ne nomita Meth-el. Karl esta kaverno.”

Vocal dynamics match well enough to say this is Methyl

“Can’t we see her,” I said.

“We have no basewater for these interruptions. All channels to this drone are closed.”

“Ni en la bigroom. La billevrites, Fran. Remem? Rich, please. Come home.”

The Theian glowed stronger briefly, a flare of rage.

“Where is the transmission coming from, robot? Channels are closed.”

“What’s billevrites, Fran?” I said. “Translate.”

Over a thousand years, Rich, the language has changed. I cannot find this word

“Bellevrites, Fran,” came the voice again.

“Close all channels.”

Francesca sent me a vision of her dashboard from before we merged, when she was a Honda four-door.

Her car radio. It still worked. Francesca was picking up an impossibility through her radio that had me afraid I was dreaming. We were twelve hundred years light years away but hearing someone speak.

Approximately, in a degraded form of English, bellevrites is Bill of Rights

It was Methyl, using a code word so we would know it was her. That had been her exclamation of joy when Xavier gave Francesca personhood, just before we merged with the drone and the Theian hidden inside. His stunt to send two “people” onto the ship he’d claimed he discovered. Now you’re covered under the Bill of Rights.

“Translate ni vivas.”

We are alive

“They’re losing the war, cargo,” said the Theian. “It’s the only way we’ve moved in and out of the tributaries on our low basewater levels. Belief in you on Earth remains. We are still marked on Earth, still seen by billions. This has happened before on other worlds, but is working better on yours, maybe because you ate our future. Belief, cargo. You can’t fight your way out of it. The more of you who will risk their eternal lives over the question of our existence the closer we come to the Metasoma and discovering the natural universe. Those on Earth who see us are connected to our flight, can’t you see?”

She lost her color. Spikes from her crown broke away from her head and shattered into shards of crystal. She was a column of crystalline, clear water. Her form shimmered and waved, as if she were meters beneath us under the waves.

She’s desiccating. She’s reducing herself, apparently to basewater

“Wait, what? Wait, Theian, we need a, we need a pilot to get home.”

“You will make it into the final Metasoma after I leave these things.”

The Theian began to droop.

“What about your, your embodiment,” I said, thinking primarily about the embodiments of myself and Francesca.

“We were sworn it. We were promised. Things have changed.”

Beads of water dripped down the Theian’s face.

“We are taking you to the natural world. You get to see outside the built universe. Now do something for us.”

Anything, Francesca said. Making a promise at that moment would have failed me and left me stumbling over my words. Francesca still had her wits about her enough to placate the Theian.

“Ask the God of These Things why It made our homes collide.”

We will

“Ni vivas,” said the Theian.

She turned entirely into liquid and ran down the face of the dim, white stars until there was no trace left. Suddenly, the drone thrummed to life and lurched toward the blank, dead, black expanse of the final Metasoma.