Everything has a name. Most things have several. Rogue asteroid RA-2061-07-yada-yada-yada was named and categorized by the Federated Organization Charting Unexplored Space (FOCUS), an organization formed during the early days of Earth’s 21st Century Global Syndicate Movement. There is one story, probably apocryphal, that the original name of the organization was Federation of Earth Corporations Exploring Space, but no one is so mature that the creation of the shittiest acronym ever constructed would have gone unnoticed.
Of course, calling RA-2061-whatever a “rogue asteroid” only illustrated the understandable short-sightedness of FOCUS. All nascent interplanetary cultures believe, initially, that the universe follows whatever list of physical laws they had observed and defined up to that point. Once one passes through the looking glass, so to speak, one realizes that the number of exceptions to the known rules is vast enough that it tends to define the fundamental law of the universe itself, namely, that the universe is composed of stuff moving around a vast vacuum. That’s it. Sure, there is some order amidst the chaos, but let’s not get carried away.
Of course, a rogue asteroid moving on its own in the void between spiral arms of the Milky Way, and moving with just enough spin to impart a reasonable amount of gravity, with “reasonable” being very species-dependent, was just as likely to gain a second, more memorable name to anyone who could find a use for it. For a group of independent-minded adventurers, pirates and assorted scalawags, that name was Barscape Prime.
Among its inhabitants, and in the stories which came later, Barscape Prime was its formal name. Informally, it had many names: the Base, Sanctuary, Haven and the like. For one core group, it was also called Home, although, like most being’s idea of home, that relationship was a complicated one to describe in either form or function. Especially for Barscape Prime, as most homes don’t have a built-in self-destruct mechanism.
And certainly not one that had been activated. On its own, the sight of the bright red T-bar lever protruding from the side of the engineering bay’s primary console should have been enough to paralyze the Feldmarschal with dread. But that was only half the story. The scorched and severed left arm of Android BSA-IX004-whatever-the-frell was hanging down from it, the T-bar handle fully contained in her metallic grip. Thankfully, he surmised, the weight of the severed arm had not been enough to overcome the lever’s counterweight.
As self-destruct mechanisms go, Barscape Prime’s didn’t frell around. It was dead simple: enter the secret code, expose the lever, yank the lever down, say good-bye. Actually, it was better if you said good-bye first before yanking the lever down. Anyway, there was no klaxon, no countdown, no mad rush to escape pods after its activation. By the time the decision was made to take this course of action, everyone had better be off the rock or dead already before some unlucky soul drew the short straw to take one for the team. By design, it was a final “frell you” to whatever enemy got this far into the base, as well as a way to clean up the somewhat colorful histories and records of its inhabitants.
The severed left arm was not by itself. The rest of the android’s body sat on the floor with its back against the front of the console, sitting in a dried-up puddle of her hydraulic fluids, facing the door with a blaster in her right hand, though ‘facing’ in this case was more of a general directional term. What remained of her face was a gaping carbonized maw of scorched electronics and melted actuators.
“Boom, head shot,” he said quietly to himself. “What the frell happened here, C?”
Informally, Android BSA-IX004-blah was known as Cyan and she was a one-of-a-kind biomechanoid construction from Doctor Hieronymus Thistlethwaite’s School for Wayward Androids. Her colorful name had nothing to do with the overall blue-ish gunmetal tint of her body. As a biomechanoid, she was a purely mechanical construction, a service android of a type suited for physical work. She was bipedal, resembling a human solely by her frame, but she did not possess the softer aspects of a human. She was not built for those sorts of activities. Her face, in better days, was more of a static template to hold the various sensors her systems required.
She, and her programming emphatically self-identified as “she”, simply appeared one morning with bright blue lipstick drawn in the form of full pursed lips where her “mouth” was. From that point on, she was Cyan and had been a constant, reliable companion and friend to the Barscapers in general and the Feldmarschal in particular. At least, she had been until…
“I was wrong, C. You were right and I was wrong. I am so sorry. I should have tracked you down and told you in person. Maybe all of this could have been avoided.”
“Sorry again, Feldy? Don’t you get tired of it?”
The Feldmarschal instinctively whirled at the sound of the unexpected voice, his right hand reaching for his blaster, but recognition interrupted the movement. That voice was from no enemy.
“Ebony?”
The being known to the ‘Scapers as Ebony sat in a chair in front of one of the auxiliary consoles. True to form, she was calmly sewing a quilt, this one barely begun. She was here, yet not. It was a common feeling one had when in the presence of the First Ones. She looked … older, a very difficult thing for an ageless being to pull off.
“Ebs, is it really you? Are you … back? How long have you been here?”
Ebs smiled and continued sewing. “So many questions, just like the Feldy I knew and loved. Yes, Sweetling, I’m here. But I’ve only just arrived.” She gestured toward Cyan’s broken body, “Please tell me that this isn’t more of your handiwork.”
Feld winced, partly from guilty habit, partly from something else laced with guilt. “I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure. 50/50? Maybe?”
Ebony shook her head and chuckled. “You give me an ‘I don’t think so’ on 50/50 odds? That explains things a bit.” After noting Feld’s quizzical look, she continued, “To answer your most important question, yes, I’m back. I’ve been released from … your religion’s concept of purgatory is probably the closest I can get to describing it. Your last little adventure cost me more than you can ever conceive. I -“
“I know, Ebs. I know. And I’m so -“
“Sorry? Yes, Dearheart. I know. A failure to be sorry when you should be is not one of your faults. On the other hand, you do find yourself in these sorrowful situations much too often.” She shook her head and paused her sewing, placing her project down neatly in her lap. “I am on probation, for lack of a better term. I’ve been released by the other First Ones as a way to make penance for my … crime. I should not have intervened the way I did. I should have been strong enough let you go.”
“You’re probably right, Ebs. You should have. In the end, saving my life might not have been worth it, truth be told.”
Ebony frowned then, annoyed at herself as she just now noticed the obvious absence. “Feld? Where’s Budo?”
Feld visibly shrank before her direct gaze and coughed nervously. The question hung in the air.
Her left eyebrow cocked visibly. “Feld?”
Another cough and mild pause. “Are you familiar with the Earth game of chess?”
“You and your games,” she replied, her annoyance growing and shifting to a new target. “Yes, of course I’m familiar with it, but that doesn’t answer my question. Where’s Budo?”
Guiltily avoiding eye contact, Feld continued, “Well, in chess, there is a tactic known as a ‘queen sacrifice’. Without going too much into it, it’s when a player -“
“Queen sacrifice?! For frell’s sake, Feld! You and your frelling games!! Don’t tell me you -” As she bit her words off suddenly the room darkened and the emergency lights flickered. The proto-quilt in her lap burst into flame and vanished in a sudden puff of smoke. A feeling akin to a cold spike pierced Feld’s heart then, whether from fear or the application of a transdimensional power or the release of a heartsickness he’d been keeping at bay he neither knew nor cared about in that particular moment.
“Feld! Where is Budo?!!”
“At this particular moment? I don’t know.” Ebony’s stare prompted his continuation, “It wasn’t supposed to be this way, Ebs. The plan was foolproof. I had it all figured out. We both had it figured out. We -“
“Enough!!”
Feld stood silent and looked at his feet as Ebony’s glare reached into his soul. A full minute passed before she broke the silence, surprisingly calm. “Feld, I love you dearly.” Glancing past him at Cyan, she continued, “We all do. But you will be the end of us. At this point, I don’t know if the First Ones released me to monitor this situation to help save it or to make the decision to finally let you go. To be honest, at this particular moment, I just don’t know which way my own feelings are pointing.”
Ebony sighed then, looking down at the ashen residue in her lap. “I need to restart the pattern. This was unexpected. I let my heart -“
And with that, she vanished from view, leaving the Feldmarschal well and truly alone with raging guilt and a home primed for self-destruction.