Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

that, or had he? Was he awake, or dreaming?
With time, everything blurred, every category, every boundary.
    He was far beyond biology now, of course. It was only technology
that kept him alive. With time, the Ship had infiltrated its
treatments and systems deeper into the shell of what had been his
body. It was as if he had become just another of the Ship’s systems,
like the air scrubbers or the water purifiers, just as old and balky,
and just as much in need of endless tender loving care.
    The decay of his central nervous system had proceeded so far that
he wasn’t sure if it returned any signals to the hardening nugget of
his brain; he wasn’t sure if he perceived the outside universe
unfiltered at all. And even the walls of his consciousness were
wearing away. He thought of his mind as a dark hall filled with
drifting forms, like zero-gravity sculptures. These were his memories
- or perhaps memories of memories, recycled, reiterated, edited and
processed.
    And he was here, a pinpoint awareness that flitted and flew
between the drifting reefs of memory. At times, as he sailed through
the abstraction of emptiness, free of memory or anticipation, indeed
free of any conscious thought save only a primal sense of self, he
felt oddly free - light, unburdened, even young again. But whenever
that innocent point settled into the dark tangle of a memory reef,
the guilt came back, a deep muddy shame whose origins he had
half-forgotten, and whose resolution he could no longer imagine.
    He wasn’t alone, however, in this cavernous awareness. Sometimes
voices called from the dark. Sometimes there were even faces, their
features softened, their ages indeterminate. Here was Diluc, his
brother, or Andres, or Ruul or Selur or one of the others. He knew
they were all long dead save for him, who lived on and on. He had
vague memories of setting up some of these Virtual personas as
therapy for himself, or as ways for the Ship to attract his attention
- Lethe, even as company. But by now he wasn’t sure what was Virtual
and what was a dream, a schizoid fantasy of his rickety mind.
    Lora was never there, however.
    And Andres, the cold pharaoh who had become his longest-enduring
companion, was his most persistent visitant.
    ’Nobody ever said this would be easy, Rusel.’
    ’You said that before.’
    ’Yes. And I’ll keep on saying it until we get to Canis Major.’
    ’Canis Major?…’ The destination. He’d forgotten about it again,
forgotten that an end to all this even as a theoretical possibility
might exist. The trouble was, thinking about such things as a
beginning and an end made him aware of time, and that was always a
mistake.
    How long? The answer came to him like a whisper. Round numbers?
Twenty thousand years gone. Twenty thousand years. It was ridiculous,
of course.
    ’Rusel,’ Andres snapped. ’You need to focus.’
    ’You’re not even Andres,’ he grumbled.
    Her mouth was round with mock horror. ’Really? Oh, no! What an
existential disaster for me.’ She glared. ’Just do it, Rus.’
    So, reluctantly, he gathered his scattered concentration, and sent
his viewpoint out into the body of the Ship. He was faintly aware of
Andres riding alongside him, a ghost at his shoulder.
    He found the place he still thought of as Diluc’s village. The
framework of corridors and cabins hadn’t changed, of course; it was
impossible that it should. But even the non-permanent partitions that
had once been built up and torn down by each successive generation of
transients had been left unmoved since the last time he was here.
Building things wasn’t what people did any more.
    He wandered into the little suite of rooms that had once been
Diluc’s home. There was no furniture. Nests were crammed into each
corner of the room, disorderly heaps of cloth and polymer scraps. He
had seen the transients take standard-issue clothing from the Ship’s
recycler systems and immediately start tearing it up with hands or
teeth to make their coarse bedding. There was a strong stink of piss
and shit, of blood and milk, sweat and sex, the most basic human
biology. But the crew remained scrupulously clean. Every few days all
this stuff would be swept up and carted off to the recycler bins.
    This was the way people lived now. They nested in starship
cabins.
    Outside, the walls and partitions were clean, gleaming and
sterile, as was every surface he could see, the floor and ceiling.
One partition had been rubbed until it was worn so thin