Diaspora Ad Astra (2 page)

TATS: Max, I know I’m skipping
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, but you’re getting the basic
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, right? Anyway this is where the branching
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good and the fuckass is
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hahahaha!

TATS: I want to go home, Max. I really
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Notes on a fMRIS scan, attributed to Dr. Jocelyn Montemayor (vessel’s physician); extracted from Montemayor’s audio logs

MONTEMAYOR: …suggest subject’s ventral tegmental areas unusually inactive. Begin note: test for quantities of dopamine in brain’s lower regions. May be
answer for subject’s intense craving and audial hallucination. End note. Scan suggests subject’s nucleus accumbens, higher and more forward than the ventral tegmental, is producing
extraordinary amounts of oxytocin. Begin note: Oxytocin is the body’s most powerful bonding element, test others as well. End note. Scan suggests pronounced activity in subject’s
caudate nucleus as well. Begin note: What’s going on? The caudate nucleus is associated with maladaptation and obsessive behavior. Are the sounds various subjects reported hearing be linked?
Can something heard affect us like this? Can sound be a vector of sorts? This does not look good. End note.

Portion of an informal report by Lt. Maximo Canlaon (vessel’s chief topiarist) to C1F Arsemo Gonzales (vessel’s commanding officer)

… cannot guarantee results. The vessel’s topiary is not designed to handle any loads greater than the computing needs of tertiary systems such as our personal
tablets and auxiliary recorders. The interaction between ambient starlight and the chlorophyll molecules in the topiary’s greenery bacterium relies on quantum superpositioning, yes, where a
single photon’s energy can be in multiple states at once. To quote my instructor from many years ago “This is what permits photosynthesis to probe all the possible reaction pathways
within the various chlorophyll molecules, selecting the most efficient pathway and transferring energy through the bacterium as the superposition collapses”.

I’m afraid that 1) the relatively small amount of energy harnessed cannot power anything outside of the design parameters; and 2) the ambient starlight where we are
currently located is weak and is in flux due to the vicinity of the WDM filament.

What do you need the power for?

I would also like to ask how long we are staying for refueling as this is the longest we have ever been in lockstep. The topiary requires better sources of starlight.

I know it is not my place to say, but it would be good to get moving again, sir.

Portion of dream, related by C1F Arsemo Gonzales (vessel’s commanding officer) to Dr. Jocelyn Montemayor (vessel’s physician); extracted from
Montemayor’s audio logs

GONZALES: ….when the last of the reserve power was spent, we found ourselves in darkness, blind to the starlight beyond the confines of our vessel. What little warmth we
had began to surrender to the impossibly cold temperatures outside. Anya’s hand found mine and our fingers interlocked, a final act of desperation.

MONTEMAYOR: Who’s Anya?

GONZALES: My wife. Back home.

MONTEMAYOR: Continue.

GONZALES: She whispered that we’ll run out of air soon. I felt numbed by the inevitability of the situation. I closed my eyes and waited for the cold to take me, to take
us, to embrace us fully and finally. I thought about our mission, about how it had begun with hope and succumbed to disaster after disaster. So many dead: Dimacali, Arenas, Tatalon. All of them,
each one I was responsible for.

MONTEMAYOR: It is just a dream. The deaths… they are not your fault. There is something… I’d like to discuss my findings with you, perhaps afterwards? Would
you like to stop?

GONZALES: This is the furthest, you know, Doctor. We’ve gone the furthest anyone has ever gone.

MONTEMAYOR: Yes, this is true. Would you like to stop? The relaxant I’ve administered to you is—

GONZALES: Anya says many things.

MONTEMAYOR: Such as?

GONZALES: She said that our singular achievement of piercing the nearest boundaries of the Oort Cloud offered little comfort. We have traversed close to a thousand SAUs in less
than sixteen years, proving beyond a doubt that the universe was modeled after a crumpled piece of paper. But what does achievement matter when we, the people left aware of our accomplishment, are
doomed to pass into
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silence? Things like that. Things like that, she said. In her way.

MONTEMAYOR: You realize that it is you talking and not your wife in your dream? And that you yourself told me that we’re in lockstep for only a little longer, until the
couplings are repaired?

GONZALES: Yes. Yes, of course. But it all seemed so real.

MONTEMAYOR: Is there more?

GONZALES: Yes. There
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.

MONTEMAYOR: Captain?

GONZALES: We
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. Anya and myself. We’re killed.

MONTEMAYOR: Again, please? I didn’t quite-

GONZALES: She says she
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she could see outside. “If I could see, if I could only see.” We’re barricaded in the
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.

MONTEMAYOR: I’m sorry, I didn’t understand what you just-

GONZALES: Anya’s
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movement and shouts took me completely by surprise. She shouts “We want to
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out! We want to
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out! We want to
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out!” And I beg her to stop.

MONTEMAYOR: Captain, I—

GONZALES: Because there is someone outside. Anya,
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, I say, reaching for her in the darkness. Stop.
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, stop!

MONTEMAYOR: I’m sorry, what did you say?

GONZALES: Stop,
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stop—

MONTEMAYOR: What did you—

GONZALES: From
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the hold, the
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sound!. Don’t listen, I
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above the,
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my ears. Anya,
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Anya please—

MONTEMAYOR:
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, I don’t underst—

Fragment of a video recorded by VB-cam 4-G6 in the quarters of Lt. Maximo Canlaon (vessel’s chief topiarist); Canlaon is in uniform but looks disheveled, his
hair untidy and his narrative interrupted by small and sudden motions. His voice is high pitched. As the cap begins, he is reading from text on his personal tablet. Towards the end of the cap, his
eyes begin bleeding

CANLAON: Ho! Look at
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all a-twitter, furry eyebrows risen full
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on his foreridge, mandibles lickerish
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and pungent, chartreuse
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thorax constricting
his folded wings, all certain signs of excitement.
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why shouldn’t he be? In his forelimbs rests a
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, still sap-papered and sealed,
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etched with the marks of subdued
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.
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thrills and croons, ecstatic at the promise
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hidden, for the
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, only for the moment, by the
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outer
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. It is a credit to his temperament
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he does
not rip it open
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like some dung heap
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, rip tear shred as
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do with abandon.
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would never
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such a thing, never, not
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if there
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no one else to see. No,
no, it is a
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, his moment, to savor and savor it he does, having waited for so long, scratching
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, on her favorite
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, sac, counting cycles of the sun of the moon
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, the
comings and goings of
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, occurrence, extending the exercise
□
, patience to new lengths.
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, lifts the small
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,, inhales the scent of hope made
□
,, and a-trembling
extends
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, tongue to lick the
□
,, just a little, just for a taste, just
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, the daintiest tip, but knows
□
, the time to see the future
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, neither here nor now, now nor
□
,.

Ho! Look at
□
, all a-quiver, the tiniest hairs on his shiny
□
, erect as if
□
, were not
□
,, colors speckling
□
, sweetness,
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oblivious to the
buzzing of his
□
,. He, too, is
□
,, and rightfully
□
,. His stomach growls at the
□
, that circle his
□
, head. It has been
□
, since his last
□
, and he knows,
he
□
,, that within him is lies the
□
, of life, a life he needs a
□
, to make whole and
□
,. He
□
, the
□
, of his new
□
, with v that
□
, her beauty, so
vigorous, her
□
, so vital, that it
□
, all of his self-control
□
, to just launch
□
, at her across the
□
, across the
□
, without a care, not to
□
, in to the
imperative of
□
, of time and the universe.
□
, he stifles his desire, stiffens his
□
,, and
□
, once twice
□
, on smooth
□
, he
□
, on,
□
, grooves
□
,
bleed
□
, while he
□
, and waits for
□
, right time
□

Fragment of a video recorded by VB-cam 4-B3 in the quarters of Dr. Jocelyn Montemayor (vessel’s physician); Montemayor is sitting on her bed, legs drawn to
her chest, her arms wrapped around her head, there is blood visible on portions of her face, she is shouting at the door where voices and the sound of rhythmic pounding are heard

MONTEMAYOR:
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I want to go
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Let me go
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I want to go
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My name is Jocelyn Montemayor! My name is Joy! I want to go
□
I want to go
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Final audio of C1F Arsemo Gonzales (vessel’s commanding officer)

GONZALES:
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Anya
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By Alexander Marcos Osias

INSERTION

It is 08-08-2108 at 0715 according to the Terran Standard Chronometer, and the closing act of Oplan Sanction is about to begin.

There, silhouetted against the crimson moon of New Isabela Three, hovering like angry elephant wasp, in geosynchronous orbit over its target, is a Malyari-class
carrier—the
R.P.S. Artemis
.

In the silence of space, seven pods eject from an obscured portion of its rough metal belly and plummet towards New Isabela Three’s surface, each one flaring into fiery
brilliance as they penetrate the atmosphere before being swallowed by a gargantuan storm hundreds of miles across. Inside each of the three-meter pods, a highly trained soldier is curled up, hoping
that the heat shielding of his pod will hold, that the Omniskin tracker of his pod will retain its lock on the insertion point, that the aging inertial dampers of his dropsuit will handle the
terrific impact to come, and that if any of these fail, death will be swift and painless.