Truban accompanied Bull and Blair to the space docks.  The station defense division relinquished the Bombastus Furioso to Bull, who approached the ship and stroked her shell lovingly,
“Here she is.  We’ve been through so much together, this ship and I; I don’t know who I’d be if I lost her.”  Bull turned to face the other men and smiled with a hint of embarrassment, there’s nothing quite like the bond a man shares with his ship, is there?” 
The others were silent.  Bull’s eyes ran over the curves of the ship, the smooth metal hull, the thin, liminal lines of panels, doors and hidden compartments.  Every line, every hue, every touch was familiar, every scar was a memory.  It was a part of him – something he felt inside – love.  He sighed and whistled for Boxers who was sniffing around a parked cart.
“I still say you’re playing with the devil, no good can come out of visiting that man,” Truban stood a short distance behind as the other two neared the Bombastus.  “Bull, have you ever happened to hear the story of Dr. Faustus?”
“Dr. who?  No I don’t think I have.”
“It’s no wonder really,” Truban reflected thoughtfully, “it would take a dedicated lifetime to develop even a superficial knowledge of the entire recorded history of the earth.”  He sighed, “I suppose a man has to accept the loss of what he hasn’t the time to know.  Ah, but Dr. Faustus, I see that you’re eager to leave,” they watched him intently, the weary and the weanling; practiced patience and agonized restraint.  Truban adjusted his thoughts, “to make it short; Faustus got what he sought and it consumed him, a man must be stronger than himself before he tries God.”
“You old romantic,” Bull grinned, “it’s too bad we met so late in life, I think we would have got along well together, blazing a trail across the cosmos.  Don’t worry, your warnings are well heeded; I’ll take the utmost care to ensure young Blair here has many adventures ahead of him.”
“Yes, I’m sure a man doesn’t reach your age without knowing a few tricks.”
As Bull turned and began to climb onto the loading hook, Truban fixed Blair in his eyes, he said softly, “be sure to discriminate the lessons you learn Blair, it’s the aware boy that makes the proud man.”
Blair was troubled by the concern in the old man’s eyes; a jolly man as he told a story, it was unsettling how suddenly he became cryptic and sober.

March watched the three intently through his viewascope while he listened abstractly to the conversation, sorting through the sentimentalities for details he could use.  The minutes passed slowly.  He kicked his legs, dangling over the edge if his ship.  The viewascope was straining his eyes and his wrist.  March set it down and rubbed his face.
Beneath him the grey of his ship dropped off sharply to the grey ceracrete of the field.  March discovered that if he held his head steady, the two would merge.  A few moments set the illusion.  Then if he tilted forward he could induce a sense of vertigo as the perception failed his eyes – a sense of falling, an impulse of panic causing his hands to instinctively grasp at the sides of his seat.
March soon grew bored with the visual trick and he became dully satisfied in watching the dusty orange forms of his shoes as they slowly swept over the distant grey. 
As if across a chasm, he faintly heard the travelers exchanging parting words.  His eyes widened and found focus.  They were leaving; March was aware that he hadn’t much time.  He dropped down into his ship, the Muddy Susan (a personal sexual innuendo even his wife was unaware of, although she had her suspicions), and initiated his request to depart.  His status as a local would enable his ship to pass through the exiting data scans in less time than the travelers, giving him lead enough to get into a position to observe them as they departed the station.  Once they passed, he could trail them; if he timed it right, he would be able to follow outside of scanner range but still be able to pick up the trace particles left by their passage.  It would be a narrow margin of opportunity; when dealing with near-light speeds a delay of minutes could mean a cold trail.

Aboard the Bombastus Furioso Blair was reunited with his rifle, he hefted and spun it about to recall its weight.  Sensing Blair’s enthusiasm, Boxers began to bark and run in circles about the ship.  Bull grumbled from his seat where he was concentrating on setting the course Truban had provided – despite the Fredaise SDD proclamation prohibiting travel into the region.  The rampant dog tumbled into Bull’s legs but trundled on and leaped over a chair, avoiding a second collision.  Bull looked sharply after the animal, but lost his stern expression in a smile.  He watched for a moment as the golden lab bounced excitedly after Blair, who had taken to teasing him.
“You two realize we won’t get there for over two months.  It may behoove you to save some of that for later.”
The ship jarred loose from the centrifugal force of the station and they were overcome with weightlessness while Bull demonstrated for Blair the manual manipulation of a drifting ship.  Boxers floated helplessly, the typical expression of canine perturbation on his face, while the men stood into the crooks of their chairs and directed the computer.
Once they were positioned, the engines emitted a dull rumbling pulse and, as they accelerated, the gravity-compensator gradually reintroduced the familiar force to the ship.

Moments after the Bombastus Furioso vanished into the black void, the computers of the Muddy Susan activated their tracking algorithm and whisked away March Grapes in pursuit.

~/8/~

One of life’s greatest agonies is anticipation and there is nothing like a month of idle time preceding immanent and unfathomable danger to nurture an understanding for this fact.  Blair attempted to occupy his gnawing attention with the databanks; he started with Dr. Faustus, by Marlowe, but found he was often lost in the context of the ancient text.  He forayed into the historical data banks to build an understanding but, growing bored and ambling, directionless, along through the data links, he was drawn to the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  It was a story of a man who escaped the constraints of social order and humanity, and indulged in animal instinct through an alternate life as a subhuman monster.  Blair consumed the text with fascination.  After finishing, possessed by an eye-glazed thoughtfulness, he reclined in one of the ship’s perfectly versatile white bucket chairs and allowed his thoughts to wander. 
Was man simply a socialized animal?  Was society all that restrained him from animal instincts?  Would reversion to bestiality be satiating – would it clear a man’s mind to be rid of his debt to society?
His roaming fancy eventually came to rest on Boxers, who was gnawing contentedly on a hog’s ear.  What really, truly, separated man from dog?
“Boxers,” he said, and the dog looked up expectantly; beady black eyes scrutinized Blair, awaiting further information.  There was intelligence in the animal’s expression, wonder in his tilted head, his excited ears and probing eyes.  Blair attempted to make eye contact.  Boxers observed Blair’s face, finding no clues concerning his summons in the inactive boy, his attention passed along Blair’s body to his hands – a likely place for items of interest.  The hands were empty and the mystery deepened.
“Bull,” Blair asked, turning his head away from the dog, content with the animal’s confused interest, “what’s the most intelligent species, other than humans?”
Bull set down a tablet he had been engrossed in.
“Most intelligent species, that’s hard to say, do you mean other than the metahumans?”
“Right, I mean something that evolved on its own.”
“I hear chimpanzees, apes, are pretty smart.”
“Yeah, but they’re genetically the most human of any animal, do you think there’s anything that separates us from, say dogs – something other than raw intelligence?”

Bull eyed Blair thoughtfully, “Are you referring to mystics – a soul or something like that?  The soul is just a semantic humans use to understand themselves, a hypothetical entity that can embody their emotions.  It’s all up here, Blair,” Bull tapped his head.  “Self awareness is a difficult concept to rationalize.”
“Right, so we’re just advanced animals?”
“Is there anything wrong with that?”
“Well, what prevents us from acting like animals, I mean impulsively, instinctually?”
Bull looked at Boxers, “Are we not impulsive and instinctual?”
“But we have higher aspirations.  Boxers doesn’t have any aspirations; he lacks an identity.  He does whatever we want to do.”
“He defers to our lead because he’s not as smart as we are, he recognizes us as higher authorities.”
“So you think it’s the same thing; Boxers is intelligent in the same way we are, only to a smaller degree.”
“Sure, is that hard to believe?”
“Well that would mean that we’re – us humans – we’re just a point on an intelligence continuum and there are things smarter, theoretically, than ourselves.  And these smarter things, they have abilities we can’t even conceive.  If we have creativity, that dogs don’t have, if we have art and science, what would they have, what abilities, what thoughts, would these smarter things posses?”
“I don’t know, but humans really aren’t the great achievement of the universe.  It is the conceit of the ignorant that we’re anything but a fleeting evolutionary snapshot. 
There was silence, filled only by a subtle, salivary gnawing coming from the floor.
“It makes you want to do something big,” said Blair, “to leave your mark.”
Bull considered, for a moment, the direction Blair had taken the discussion, “I think we’ve all felt it.  I once heard that sentiment compared to throwing a rock in a pond; the bigger the splash, the longer the ripples last.”
“But they still fade away.  Is that the point?”
“Everything fades, it’s fundamental to the universe.  Nothing is static, life wouldn’t be able to exist without constant change.  This concept is nothing new and man has known this since before the advent of writing; read Heraclitus,” Bull said, pointing to the tablet Blair had set aside, “an early Greek, he wrote; ‘Justice is in strife.’  What he meant was that life only makes sense as something that constantly changes.  Change is perceived as strife because it forces us to adapt, but adaptation breeds strength and, consequently, the next generation of life.”
“So maybe Boxers is less adapted – forgotten by evolution?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that, he’s just on a different evolutionary journey.  Do you judge him as ‘forgotten’ because he is unaware, because he has no deep understanding of the world around him, no great concerns?  Perhaps he doesn’t aspire to knowledge; understanding is a human obsession – the cosmos would exist even if we weren’t here to know about them.”
Blair was thoughtful for a long pause, subjecting the conversation to the scrutiny of an inner concern.
 “This man we’re going to see, do you think he’s done something, something to make himself more than us?”
“Ah, that’s both my wish and my concern; I certainly hope he has abilities beyond my own, otherwise he’s not much help, but I also hope that we’re able to offer him something, or at the least, not be at his mercy.”
“I don’t know Bull, but something tells me he isn’t any more of a man than you or I.  I don’t care how long he had the advancement protocol; if he was born a man, he’ll die a man.”

“Mr. Acero, the work you’ve been doing for my husband does not concern me.  The work I have in mind is of an entirely different sort.”  Ricardo felt his blood run hot, it shot up the sides of his neck, flushed his face; he loosened his tie and collar.  The woman shifted her hips, seductively grinding herself into the supple white couch beside him; tight red silk clung to her smooth legs, conformed to every crease and curve of her satin skin.
“Mr. Acero,” she whispered through parted, plush red lips, her soft white cheeks slowly sliding to the whims of her sensitive jaw.  Inquisitive eyes searched him for a reaction as she leaned in slowly, “do you have any idea what it is that I need?”
Her dress shifted across her breasts, nipples protruded pointedly through the thin fabric.
Ricardo watched her coolly, this was his favorite part.  A soft hand gently straightened the corner of his collar, lingered and slid down to his chest.  She pressed lightly against him and her lashes dropped modestly.  The fingers stretched wide, rubbing into the fabric of his shirt, and she ran them up to his arm.  Her eyes looked back up into his – Ricardo shuddered with a chilling thrill; intensity had entered the eyes, animal desire.  She fluidly rolled onto her knees; the wonderfully expanding figure of femininity extended before him, her back dipped lightly, coyly.
“Carmen, you in here?”
The voice sounded loudly from the next room.  Ricardo’s guilty eyes darted to the doorway just in time to witness Tony Gumbatti as he strode characterfully into the room.  Black wingtips stopped hard on the crimson shag.
“What the fuck!”
Ricardo slid expertly under the surprised girl’s planted arm, his feet found the floor and he sprung to attention.
“You are dead Acero!”
The Italian rushed him with thick, grasping hands.

Ricardo held for a moment, to allow Tony time to commit to his charge, and then side-stepped the attack.  He thrust his knee into the crotch of the man’s dark suit.
An expensive gold chain twinkled and lept from the warmth of Tony’s under-shirt and caught in the air – fully extended, thickly gelled hair flopped forward and a harsh cough burst from fat lips.
Ricardo thrust hard with his knee, propelling the man away.  Tony staggered on tightly held legs.  Ricardo stepped after him.
“Fucking cubano!”  The Italian rose swiftly, like a bull thrusting after the hapless matador, he slammed a clenched fist across Ricardo’s chiseled jaw.  Ricardo spun on his hips and, with his right hand, grabbed the Italian by the collar.
The men clutched each other desperately and fell to the floor, scrambling for vital strangle-holds.  Ricardo got a thumb into his opponent’s eye; he felt two steely hands slip around his throat and realized his mistake.  He released the eye with a gasp and tried frantically to pry Tony’s arms apart.  With each choking blink of his watering eyes he searched desperately for an escape.

March Grapes sat up swiftly from the scpinematic’s retinal beam.  Sweat dappled his forehead.  He touched his throat reassuringly.
“Damn,” he muttered as he looked at the view screen, which depicted Ricardo being tossed, half living, into an ally.
It just wasn’t the same any more; the interactive scpinematic was beginning to feel more like work than entertainment.

The first few days had been a boon to March; alone at space, he was in a world of peace and quiet.  Not since his bachelorhood had he experienced such freedom.  For the entirety of the first day he was content to do nothing – he hummed to himself and smiled at the good fortunes soon to come. 
But he was not long to discover that he had an excess of free time at his disposal; the computer really didn’t need his supervision to trail the “bumpkins”, as he liked to call them, and he reasoned that even if he lost them, it really wasn’t a concern now that he knew their heading.  In space, where the shortest distance between two points is almost always a straight line, once one has a heading there isn’t much guessing as to where the final destination lies.
So, with no occupation to demand his attention, March Grapes waited.  A week of uninterrupted idleness passed and the walls began to feel as if they were closing on him, the food began to taste ‘reform’, and boredom picked at his brain with a dirty finger.
March listened to music until he hated the songs he loved, he engaged the scpinematic until he grew bored and stopped participating, content to watch; it didn’t really need him anyway, he only disturbed the progress of the stories.
March spent a few days relaxing on heroinPM and listlessly watching the scpinematic.  He briefly lost track of himself and, sobering up, began to wonder how his wife must have reacted at discovering his note informing her that he would be “gone for an indeterminate amount of time on business”.  But what did he care if she was mad, she’d forgive him when he came back carting a king’s ransom.  March smiled at the thought of a speechless wife – a rarity in his real life.
He also had time to wonder if anyone had noticed his illegal servicing of his ship.  He had taken certain liberties with the computer-monitored repair station. But he figured if a machine could be taken advantage of, a machine should be taken advantage of; the SDD would have someone supervising the maintenance shop if they didn’t expect to be hacked occasionally.  “Nothing beats a man with a mission” he liked to say, sometimes ad nauseam when he floundered in the folds of a drug-loosened mind.
All good things come to an end and days into the resumption of his binge, March, feeling cheated by the designers of heroinPM who had safety-regulated the dosages, popped three pills at once.  The microbots in his system registered the illegal dosage and, without any warning or reprimand, they permanently disabled his ability to absorb the drug at all.  At first March was dumbfounded by the revelation; he had heard of this kind of thing but had never experienced it.  Wonder quickly led to rage and in a carmine fury he broke a few useful items before he felt recompense.
After that, the days were spent quietly resigned to life’s cruel tedium.  He was depressed for a few days but there wasn’t any real incentive to stay so and he gradually forgot his self-pity.  The ship’s computer had plenty of puzzles and March played with each until it was no longer entertaining.  Then, after two weeks had passed, the days began to become endless – the hours merged into one undisturbed vacancy.   Without heat lamps in the ship to regulate the passage of time life was as one long night to an insomniac.  Only the stoic digits of the readout on the computer told him how long he had been at space. 
When, one ‘morning’ as he was urgently awakened from a daze by the ship’s alarm, March was actually glad to discover that the Muddy Susan was being attacked by strange space craft.

~/9/~

Blair was relaxing, reclined in a bucket chair, his head in an audio cone – sound projected so that it could only be heard within a narrow focus.  He was enjoying 22nd century music from earth; there was so much he had not heard, created by humans and the artificial intelligence alike.  Although AI had created some amazing music, both structurally and emotionally, that was indistinguishable from human creations, Blair still preferred listening to something he knew another human had created; he felt as if he knew that someone was communicating to him through time and space.
Blair wasn’t wearing his usual blue versi-suit, but rather a simple pair of shorts that he hadn’t bothered to change out of after cooling down from an electrostimule workout. 
Time spent inactive in space encourages muscular atrophy; after hours sitting, confined to a single room, a single chair, the flesh shrivels and dies.  Upkeep requires intense physical maintenance and the electrostimule machine was man’s solution.  Wires affixed to the skin provided intense jolts of electricity which compelled selected muscle groups to flex and relax at the computer’s whim.  Thirty grueling minutes a day kept the two travelers in excellent physical condition.
Blair opened his eyes to a gentle pulling sensation.  Bull was standing up.
“Something is wrong, we’re stopping.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, this has never happened, the ship hasn’t given an obstacle warning, it hasn’t said a thing.  Why are we slowing down?” he shouted, facing a receiver port.
“Propulsion failure,” came the response.  “Five incoming space craft, identification; Aphid.”
What the hell is an aphid?”  Bull asked breathlessly.
“Didn’t Truban mention them?”  Blair offered, trying to stand but discovering a lack of gravity.
“Incoming projectile, 200 kilograms.”  The computer hadn’t time to finish speaking before the ship was rocked with a tremendous impact.  A hole appeared in the ceiling near the forward end of the ship.  The metal rippled away, dispersing the impact over the entirety of the ship’s surface.  In a spray of shrapnel, a body came tumbling into the ship and slammed against a console panel.
Using his chair as leverage, Blair dove for his defense rifle, which lay just a few yards away.  A strange grey creature sprung to its feet, crouching in the pit of the wall and the floor.  It was powerfully humanoid, smooth, naked and nearly hairless.  Its featureless face was long and tapered into a loose, fleshy snout.  Tendons and veins showed clearly under its nearly translucent, grey marble skin.  Widely spaced, impassive, black eyes sharply reflected the lights of the cabin, and, like wicked swords, it held a long metal blade in each of its hands.
Boxers leaped at the creature, his lips curled back and his teeth bared in a vicious snarl.  With a back-handed swing of a sword, the tightly muscled abomination neatly severed the dog’s fore-limbs.  Boxers was diverted by the force of the blow and slid helplessly along the floor.
Acting purely under instinctual control, Blair grabbed his gun and began twirling, weightlessly, legs over head, with the momentum of a leap.  A second jarring shock passed over the ship, and a second body, expelled from fragmenting metal pod, came flying into the ship’s quarters, this time entering from the floor and landing hard against the ceiling.
Blair opened fire, bullets cut through the air invisibly, leaving no trace of their passing, except where they met resistance; a handful of projectiles gorged through the first aphid and continued out through the wall of the ship.  The aphid staggered and lost it’s footing on the white walls.  Tiny holes in its flesh sealed over bloodlessly.
A burst of blinding electric energy sparked from the squatting form of the second aphid.  It was firing from a mechanism in the base of one of its blades and the surging flow of crackling light struck Blair in his midsection.
Searing pain wracked his body as flesh bubbled and popped.  He writhed and twisted spasmodically – muscles misfiring erratically.  The attack lasted less than a second and left putrid smoke expanding from Blair’s twisted body.
A quiet buzzing heralded a spattering of activity across the aphid’s head.  Little holes appeared and vanished, like rain hitting a puddle.  Black phlegm burst from the creature’s mouth and, as it curled over, its snout fell inward toward its knees.
Bull pivoted and, with a straight arm, pointed Claire at the other, recovering, aphid, which was in the process of bringing its own weapons to bear.  The pistol ground out its little song once again and to a similar effect; the intruder jerked to a state of inanimation as metal shards spun through its brain.
The limp bodies drifted into the open spaces of the ship.  Boxers whined pitifully.
            “Sons of bitches,” Bull roared.  “Cannons on full offensive.”  There was no mistaking his intentions and the computer did not hesitate to comply.  The left and right cannons began to fire with unerring accuracy at the lurking space craft.  The beams fired from the left cannon faded ineffectually against invisible energy diffraction fields surrounding the aphid ships, but the right cannon sparkled crisply through soft metal; its first target was cut cleanly open, exposing the inhabitants to the cold grasp of space.
            The other four ships began to move, circling the Bombastus erratically.  The main cannon selected a new target, punching a deep trench through the hull.  With two ships already disabled, the three remaining craft vanished, accelerating to sub-light speeds instantly. 

            March sat forward in his seat, gaping at the main viewing screen.  “What the fuck?”  But he knew what they were, the two ships were horribly familiar; aphids.  A plague of asexual mutants, created by God himself, designed as a race of soldiers, but ultimately beyond control.
            A tracing laser flashed from the prow of his ship, finding the nearer aphid craft.  The approaching ships juked apart sharply, narrowly avoiding the Muddy Susan’s forward mounted gattling gun as it began to fire.  March flew from his seat in the zero-gravity as his ship rotated forward and jerked to a halt, bringing the top-mounted gattling gun into position.  The two guns crossed their streams, like the blades of a scissors, spattering projectiles over the hull of a maneuvering aphid.  Machinery and organism alike were blasted violently to pieces by the shells, traveling at velocities beyond human comprehension.
            Stinging blood ran from a thin cut on March’s forehead into his eyes.  His probing fingers found the hard surface of the view screen.  A crash thrust him back, catching his hips against the top of his chair.  As he spun, cartwheeling through the cabin, trailing droplets of scarlet blood, he passed a lanky grey body, unfurling its long sinewy legs.
            “Traps!”  March screamed, his own voice echoing painfully in his shaken ears.  A tube slid from the ceiling and flashed into position, anticipating the progress of the aphid.  The unblinking monstrosity absorbed the force of its flight in its long ashen legs.  It crouched majestically and rotated back its head to view its quarry; March was helplessly flailing. 
A hollow, metallic rush of air and an organic ‘pop’ indicated the success of March’s trap.  Red blood gathered in droplets spread evenly across the room and slathered along the walls.  Brain and fluids covered the touch screens, and white teeth clicked against the stainless metal walls.
The gattling guns quit firing.
March caught the rear wall with his foot and twisted his body around.  Using handholds he climbed along the inner hull of the ship.
“Air purification,” he commanded.
The floating liquids languidly began to meander toward vents located in the corners of the ship.
March pulled himself into his pilot’s chair and checked on the status of the Bombastus Furioso.

Light-minutes ahead, the Bombastus Furioso floated listlessly.
A swarm of microbots created a visible haze on Blair’s torso.  The bleeding had been stopped but the task remained of restoring the muscle and tissue.  Boxers, too, was receiving treatment; Bull carefully held first one foreleg and then the other as special microbots anesthetized and then reattached the limbs.
“It’s a blessing no one was hit in the head,”  Bull said, “muscle and skin are easy enough to repair, but the brain is much too complex.  I think that’s the problem these guys had.  Amazing, though, aren’t they, I’ve never seen something heal so effectively.  Passive resistance, I’d call it, Blair; the bullets just went right through.  But to touch, they’re as hard as rocks; simply amazing.”  Blair groaned.
Soon the microbots were done; Blair’s body looked nearly as it had that morning.  Muscle was strong and flexible and the skin unscathed, only the soft fuzz of tiny hairs was missing – burned away temporarily.  But something else had changed; a distant look in the eye, a loss of warmth.  A flavor can not be imagined, but once it has been acquired – tasted – the experience is irreversible; the memory is deep and permanent.  Blair’s psyche still smacked of the damp taste of death.  His usual smile had been darkened thoughtfully, the new expression was subdued by traces of remembered pain.
Bull released the repaired Boxers to drift, the yellow dog more confused than ever, and set about discovering their situation.  With the help of the rather brilliant computer, it was soon evident that, for reasons which gave Blair headaches, the aphid ships were interfering with their own ship’s ability to travel at light speed, in fact, the Furioso’s main propulsion system was completely disabled within hundreds of thousands of miles (or a few seconds of near-light speed travel) from the aphid disrupters.  Fortunately the disruption devices could be damaged and their liberation was a simple matter of carving up the disabled ships with the main laser cannon until the devices were destroyed.
With the destruction of the second ship, the Bombastus leaped back into near-light speed and the three travelers, along with the recently acquired bodies, fell to the floor.
The Muddy Susan was quick to follow.

“Ho boy, I’m going to enjoy kicking the shit out of these guys,” March grumbled, leaning forward in his chair and picking absentmindedly at an itchy scab in his skin.  “For every briar-patch like this that they drag me through I’m going to kill them! – ah… enjoy killing them more!”  He smoldered in silence for a moment, “that encounter was avoidable and, ah, ah, uncalled for, where in the hell are they going?  There’s nothing out here but danger.”  He wondered if they knew he was following and were attempting to shake him.  No, that wouldn’t make sense, they were subjecting themselves to the same dangers.  No, there was something out here, some sort of hidden treasure that was well protected by its remote location.  The bumpkins would never survive this ordeal, he was convinced, whatever it was they were after would be too valuable to permit sharing.

Blair and Bull stood over one of the bodies.  “It’s turning white,” Blair observed; the inky pools of black under the creature’s skin were growing fainter.  Blair pressed his fingers against the immobile corpse, the skin was solid; it would barely yield the faintest depression to his digging finger nails and a forceful blow was met with concrete resistance.
“Truban’s data banks have some interesting information on these ‘aphids’”, Bull said.  “God created them to serve him as an army.  Apparently he was planning a massive attack on Fredaise station, but some of the aphids slipped from his control and began reproducing, unchecked.  The independent aphids expanded away from God’s searching influence and nearly stumbled over Fredaise station.  Like an insect swarm, hungry for resources, they swarmed and attacked.  The organized humans were able to hold off most of the invaders and, in the process, develop an intimate understanding of the ways of the aphid and how to kill it.  When God launched his attack, months later, Fredaise station was prepared and able to hold him off.  Their intelligence indicates that God has now abandoned the creatures entirely.  The people of Fredaise are vigilant and wary of what form his next attack will take.”
“So these aphids were independent?”
“It certainly seems to be the case.”
“That must mean that they can repair their own ships.”
“Amongst other sophisticated activities; they are quite developed.  But apparently God bred abstract thought and emotion out of them.  They can perform what they are taught admirably, even fearlessly, but they lack innovation or ambition.”
“The perfect shock trooper?”
“Indeed.”
“But why did they flee after attacking us?”
“We can only guess, but it seems likely that they simply gauged us as an unworthy risk of resources.
They stood over the cool bodies in contemplative silence.  Bull spoke,
“Shall we dump them now?”

“Would you like to hold him?” the nurse asked, offering March Grapes a new born baby boy.
‘Bundle of joy’ read the blanket wrapped around the wrinkled, fleshy organism pressed into his arms.  Dark blue eyes glowered at him from puffy flushed lids.  The baby was watching him like an animal and, strangely, it made March fearful and uneasy.  A sense of dread infected him from its vacant stare.  A sudden comprehension penetrated his understanding of what had otherwise been a day defined by awestruck observation of the bounds of physical pain, as vociferously narrated by his wife.  This baby represented more than the start of one life, already receiving the nudges of the world pushing it along its destined path, it represented a definition of March’s own life.
In the baby there was the hope of a limitless future, an unwritten existence, but it was freedom transferred, the mystery of March’s future had been spent.  From this point, he was a provider; the sham of self determination could no longer be maintained, it was clear that he no longer lived for himself. 
March did not feel the joy advertised on the blanket – it was desperation; he sensed that time was slipping away and considered the possibility that he might never accomplish the many things he dreamt of as a boy.  He considered the notoriety, wealth and satisfaction he had promised himself many years ago during a time when everything was possible and life had no end.  But nothing was that simple and the promise of success was a lie adults told children so they wouldn’t cry.  It was a dismal life March grew into, but he was a man that refused to die.  Even as his worries mounted, as he discovered love to be changing, humans to be cowards, and opportunity to be unforthcoming, he refused stubbornly to succumb to death.  He pursued personal pleasure brazenly in the face of despair and drank heartily of every corporeal allowance life afforded.  But life was as tenacious as he.
The baby was heavy in his arms, it was a weight sinking through his body, deadening his legs and bowing his back.  He stole a look down at its face and discovered with horror that its eyes gazed into him unceasingly.  The weight increased until March felt his knees faltering under the strain.  “I need to sit down,” he said and then he sat.  The child would not stop watching, his eyes would not leave his father’s face – his questioning, wondrous, laughing eyes that refused to focus as if they gazed right through him.
The paper thin skin parted beneath the soft nose – lips, the same crushed red as his raw skin, opened in a yawn.  Consuming breath drank of March, held him to his chair, threatened him in a mute and soporific roar.

The months passed with regularity; the weeks were short but the days long. Blair banished the minutes in exasperation but, as it is with wasted time, he lamented their passage when they were gone.  Restless for activity he could only find satisfaction – condone the idleness – in reading the data banks, pursuing the expansion of knowledge. 
Despite the discovery, the limitless topics and unimaginable stimuli one can only read for so long and, for Blair, the journey through space soon became a test of restraint.  Like a monk, he removed, one at a time, the animal temptations from his being; he could not desire, he could not aspire.   Rather than claw restlessly like a caged beast he found strength in his abstinence, he breathed deeply with patience.  He tempered the youthful restlessness of his thoughts by following Bull’s scholarly lead.  The old man was almost always absorbed in his data banks or, if not, then in writing or creating works of art.
One day while he sat quietly, watching the old man and attempting to meditate thoughtlessly, yet pondering the torture of his idle situation, a question came to his mind; “Bull,” he asked, “do you think space travel is natural for man?  Is this the logical destination of evolution?  Or should we be chasing Bison with a sharp stick? – have we, perhaps, gone too far, too fast?”
Bull looked up, smiling,
“Perhaps I have been misunderstood, I think nothing is ‘natural’ or unnatural for man, if it doesn’t kill him, he adapts – makes it part of his nature.”
“Okay, maybe, but the feedback, the feelings he gets doing certain things, encourages him along particular occupations...”
“True, mental or physical health is always a good indicator for whether a lifestyle will persist.”
“So then, do you think space travel is a ‘lifestyle that will persist?’”
“Does it feel wrong to you?”
“Well, it does feel like I’m forced to neglect a lot of instincts.”
“Are they valued instincts?”
“They are difficult to deny, but most of them have a reputation of being ignoble; pride, frustration, carnal obsession – it is as if this lifestyle compels us to come to terms with ourselves, to be intellectuals.”
“There are only two reasons for exploration; you are either raping and plundering, or observing and learning.”
“And we’re observing and learning; we’re intellectuals, but is intellectualism something persistent?  Aren’t we, in effect, by denying primal urges, advancing right out of the evolutionary line?”  Bull smiled passively, and Blair continued, “Do you have any children, Bull?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Kind of interesting isn’t it?”
“Yes, I suppose it may be.”
“It also makes me wonder what Boxers would be like if he wasn’t neutered; that’s kind of like forced intellectualism, isn’t it?”  Blair grinned and looked at the dog who was chasing rabbits on the scpinematic.  Bull wasn’t smiling.

As two more months ran their course; the time stole away with impunity before Blair’s helpless eyes.
Early one ‘morning’, as Boxers and Blair still slept, the computer prompted Bull with a message while simultaneously the engines began to die,
“Unidentified ships.  Targeting systems failure,” the computer warned.
“Blair!  Wake up,” Bull shouted.
The computer displayed three small, strange ships on a view screen and then relayed an incoming message, “Submit voluntarily to docking procedure and conveyance to stand before the jurisprudence of God, or suffer immediate execution.”
Blair rushed to Bull’s side.
“We’re here,” the old man announced.

~/10/~

“I’ll show you jurisprudence,” March grumbled as he raced to the forward gattling gun’s controls.  He had already assigned the rear gun as a sweeping secondary accompaniment; failed targeting systems were no cause for a man to panic.
The three ships floated patiently before him, they were smooth and metallic, shaped nearly like eggs; metal eggs with ominous protrusions emanating from their hulls.  One began to close the distance to the Muddy Susan.  With sweaty hands March grabbed parallel handles as they emerged from concealment in the wall.
A screen with crosshairs blinked on in front of him and a retinal projector flashed into his eyes.  Using the orientation guides at the sides of his vision, March was quickly able to locate the ships.
With grit teeth, he pulled the triggers beneath his index fingers.  The Muddy Susan thrummed harmonically and invisible steel tore through the approaching ship.  The two others darted from March’s view.  He spun after them while verbally initiating a randomly seeded, computer controlled, evasive pattern.
The smooth ships had projectile cannons of their own and, despite the erratic dodges of the Muddy Susan, screaming shards tore through the hull in a buzzing swarm all around March Grapes.  Consoles exploded, sparks flew and the passive hull snapped like a flag in the wind.  A ship flew across March’s view.  Possessed by an intense calm, he changed direction to pursue but it was already lost to him.  The chaos inside the Muddy Susan was in the throes of a mighty crescendo of destruction – infuriated sparks and shards filling the air.  Empty thoughts raced through March’s brain, he rattled off ammunition in a blind reverie.
Then it was over, the echoes of tumult reverberated in his head, but he was aware that it had ended.  Was this death, he wondered.  His fingers still held the triggers down, but vibrations ceased to flow from the cannons.  A hollow banging shook March into a stupor, colors blurred into nothing.

They proceeded slowly, the strange ships allowed them only minimal propulsion but it was enough to invoke gravity.  Their sensors were scrambled, they were unaware of the asteroid until the computer noticed it on the viewascope.  A massive drifting rock was surrounded by droves of floating structures and tiny ships; it embodied the activity of an ant hill, countless drones passing on countless errands.
The Bombastus Furioso, linked to a steely, egg-shaped ship, was led to a giant amongst the space stations.  As they approached, Bull directed the viewascope across the asteroid.
“Well look at that,” he exclaimed.
“What?” Blair asked.
“It looks like the back is covered with thrusters; they’re moving the asteroid.”
They were flown into an airlock.

“Exit your ship,” came the command.
Bull shrugged and then climbed onto the loading hook.  They tentatively emerged from beneath the Bombastus.  Boxers held his tail low and ears alert, Bull and Blair were tense and gripped their weapons.
An ugly, big-headed man in flowing purple robes approached them.  He was barefoot and his naked toes peeked from under gold fringes of the straight falls of his robe.  The features of his face were mildly misshapen and he wore a black goatee in a failed attempt to conceal his imperfections.  His dark hair was held back tightly on his head and he spoke though his teeth,
“Bull, Blair, animal,” he addressed them.  “Welcome to Valhalla Station.  Please follow me, you will find refreshment and explanation.”
The man led them out of the airlock into a richly decorated hall; thick carpet, yellow wood trim – meticulously carved, lustrous baby blue walls, paintings and hangings.
They walked to a grand lobby, a garish transition, decorated in rich pink, salmon and peach.  Crystal and gold dazzled the eye.  The expansive room was empty of activity save for a naked female crossing at the opposite end.  She was hairless below the neck, but she had a flowing head of bright ocher hair.  Her figure was perfectly sculpted, her skin an even shade of apricot flesh that seemed to blend with the room itself.
Blair’s eyebrows raised, he looked at Bull who frowned.  They passed down a second hall and stopped at a pair of cardinal, gold trimmed, double doors.  Their attendant opened the doors with the inveterate adroit of one performing his God-given duty.  He humbly ushered them in.
Inside was a tidy, expansive, office.  The walls were corner-less and a large oval carpet in the center of the room conformed to their precedent delineation.  The room was decorated with a few potted plants, a few flags, a few replications of neatly polished nineteenth century furniture.  Four large ‘windows’ projected rear-lighting into the room and the silhouette of a man sat behind a dark desk in its center.
The door closed and the man in the purple robes was gone.
“Come sit, be at ease,” the man behind the desk spoke.  Two chairs faced the man, evenly spaced along lines traced from the corners of his desk.
Bull sat down and Blair followed his example.  Boxers stood uneasily behind Bull.  Their eyes adjusted to the bright light.  The man that sat before them was small, not significantly short, but his demeanor suggested a weakness beneath his midnight blue suit and red tie.  His hair was dark brown and buzz-cut.  Thick eyebrows and lumpy nose surrounded glassy umber eyes.
“My name is Acolyte.”  He told them.
“Refreshments.”  He said.  A small robot sped expertly into the room and presented a tray of various baked trifles and a tray of mixed vegetables.  Blair looked at Bull who nodded.  Blair pointed at various items which the robot whisked onto a plate and then presented to him.  Bull declined the invitation with a nod of his head and the robot queried, “Beverage?”
“Tea will do,” Bull answered.  The robot indicated momentary confusion, “For two,” Bull continued.  The robot procured two steaming cups and vanished.
Acolyte gave them twenty seconds of quiet after the robot had departed.
“It is standard procedure for God to ascertain the intentions of all visitors.  I notice that you are equipped with weapons.  You will have to surrender them at this time.  They will be returned to you at the time of your departure.”
“In the event that that time arrives,” Blair whispered to himself.
The beetlish robot appeared again, two hooks unfurled from the side of its carapace.  Bull and Blair placed their guns on the hooks and the robot vanished again.
“Very good.  Now if you would be so kind as to describe your intentions.”
Bull looked the man professionally in the eyes, “I’m here to speak with God; I have a favor to ask.”
“That can not be arranged.”  Acolyte responded.  “Please direct your concerns to myself.”
A terse silence invaded the room. Blair’s thoughts of frustration were interrupted by a static tickle in his hair.
An expression of discomfit crossed the features of the man in the suit and he said with a frown, “God will see you now.”

They were led down a new hall by the attendant in the purple robes.  The hall ended in a magnificent foyer; the dimensions of the extensive room were lost in the reflective sheen of crystal, nacre, marble and mirror.  Light sparkling from the suspended crystal fragmentation of chandeliers became lost, deflecting and refracting off of the myriad surfaces until it surrendered, and faded into general luminance.
The dark man stopped at the foot of three solid gold stairs, leading to an oppressive gold landing reflectively presenting the image of the room as it might be viewed lazily gazing through a glass of champagne.  Blair strode surely onto the stairs, Bull and Boxers following.  Two massive doors, encompassed in brazen gold, portrayed, across their threshold the image of God touching Adam, copied impeccably from the long deceased ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  At a touch from Blair’s hand, his fingers meeting those of the illustrated, the doors swung open inwardly.

They entered into a heady air damp with spice and incense; sputtering torches struggled with deep orange flames.  The doors closed silently behind them.  A promenade extended down the center of the room, flanked by warm baths; their waters, through mellowly churning surges and ebbs, reflected the misty splendor of the room; blue walls and gold gargoyles, white marble pillars and varied, ornate decoration.  Humid fog lay heavily over all.
As they slowly began to make their way along the murky promenade, the waters and the marble floors seemed to writhe, to crawl with supple flesh.  Blair sharpened his gaze.  Naked nymphs; women exuding sultry sexuality, moaned fetchingly and sensually slid their smooth bodies against each other.  The excitement of spotting the prowling beauty he had felt earlier was absent now, Blair’s stomach tensed with fear and found voice in a whimper from the dog.
As they reached the halfway point of the promenade they could see the end of the hall; a gold throne was surrounded by mounds of decadent, embroidered silk pillows and two flaming cisterns which obscured its seat.
The travelers stepped between the fires together and the figure of a man was revealed from the gloom.  A woman stood, elevated, beside the throne, her glossy bronze skin was wetly and radiantly illuminated by the tumultuous conflagrations.  She leaned over the man, hips raised, serpentine neck stretching, her lips to his ear where she whispered saccharine seductions.  Her hands massaged his bared shoulders rhythmically.  The man was watching them.
He was dressed in a deep ultramarine silk robe decorated with Chinese dragons, encircling his body, teeth holding tails.  The robe trailed beyond his feet in falls over the steps beneath him.  A strong neck supported a face that appeared chiseled from stone, with sharp cheekbones, aquiline nose and smooth brow.  Crisp strawberry blonde hair hung below his shoulders.  Most striking of his features were his pallid, intelligent eyes; perhaps due to a trick of the light, the two orbs appeared the yellow color of pale urine.
With a wave of his hand he dismissed the voluptuous woman from his side.  He gazed at them – his deep, thoughtful eyes belied the youthful tight skin stretched over his angular skull.  He smiled joylessly,
“Welcome Bull, Blair… Boxers.  I am called God. I am pleased to make your acquaintance.  You come from Fredaise, it is so rare I have visitors from the fair station, I am beginning to think I am unpopular with the populace.  Here, please, be seated.”
Spindly metal chairs, inset with firm cushions, were placed before the throne.  The two sat and looked up into the illumined face of their host.
“I am sure you are in a world of wonder.  This humble abode, my home, is also an endeavor in self expression; if you’re willing to humor me – I like to try to explain it, and to a degree, myself, to my more… apt guests.”
Blair nodded and Bull unblinkingly smoothed the legs of his trousers.
“I am a scientist, I invent things, I create.  These stations are my laboratory, my science is life.  I bring new beings into existence, I shape psyches.  My subjects are in some ways my children, in others they are embodiments of my thoughts; each represents a unique cerebration brought to actualization, a living representation of my will.  They are my servants and my pupils, and like any teacher I learn from my students.  But, unlike a teacher, my lessons come from manifestations of my own thoughts, a feedback loop of my own imagination, if you will.  Imagine, Bull, if your paintings could speak to you.  Perhaps you see how one’s own thoughts can become… heavy.
It pleases me to see new faces, faces not borne from my own eyes.”
His body was inhumanly still, his bared neck, smooth and unwavering.  Yellow eyes smoldered in the pure white skin.
“The women you see around you are engineered to please, their soft touch can melt the tightest muscle, their sweet voice may turn savage beast to groveling puppy, and their orgasm elevates a man to the ranks of a deity.  They are eager to listen and eager to tell, compassionate to the every mood or whim of the man they serve.
But they are fragile, unsuited to the world outside, I keep them as testament to my will, the peace I impose on my dominion.  They are unsoiled beauty; I created them, distilled them from raw humanity.”
Blair took another look across the translucent blue of the baths; anodyne smiles greeted him softly, his pulse eased its rapid beat. 
God merely paused,
“I created intelligence; human computers with exemplary memories and calculating ability.  Computers capable of making rational decisions, not to imply that machines are incapable of rationale, but unlike mechanical computers, all my creations have loyalty – chemical loyalty.  The beauty of chemicals is that they are so easily manipulated and so powerfully effective.  Feelings – what will one not do at the coercive press of feelings?  Chemical imbalance can overpower any mental fortitude, can drive a man from his sanity, make his actions not his own.  All of my servants love me unconditionally, unreasonably; my well-being surpasses the priority of their own; in a way, all their thoughts belong to me.”
He paused and Blair expected him to blink, to betray some sign of restlessness in his stiff demeanor.
“I developed soldiers, the pinnacle of hardiness – animal survivability.  For their size they are creatures stronger than conceived by nature itself.  Their tough skins are resilient to temperature, desiccation, radiation, tooth, nail and sword.  But distinction comes in their defense against man; the bullet.  Attacks surpassing their toughness are passively allowed unhindered passage, and accelerated healing repairs damaged tissue almost instantly; not a drop of blood is spilled.  Designer microorganisms, along with an assisting contingent of microbots, repair organs assiduously.”
“What about the brain?” Blair asked.
God paused, his pale eyes slid to rest on Blair.
“I see you’ve had some experience, encountered some of my errant aphids, perhaps?  Yes, the human brain is remarkably complex; there are some things that can be understood but still exist just beyond the realm of mastery.  Frustrating.  Even the Advancement Algorithm found difficulty with some tasks.”
“Oh, oh,” Bull stammered.  God curled the edge of his lips in a biased grin.
“The advancement algorithm?” he questioned Bull, “Have you had the pleasure to encounter it?”
“Yes, yes back on – a long time ago.  It slipped away.”
“It has a habit of doing that, I’m afraid.  I used it, it was a splendid tool; sorted out all of the unpleasant details, provided the freedom for innovation; animals toil, creative thought is divine.  I won’t say I wouldn’t like it back.”
“You, you don’t have it?  Anymore?”
“No, not anymore.  I lost it a few years ago.  I searched everywhere for the bloody thing, well my Acolyte did, I was busy, too busy I know now.  Distraction is a human weakness; focus is not omniscience.  Unrestricted piercing thought, total understanding…”
God jerked his head, the leaping tendrils in the cisterns flashed menacingly in his in eyes.  His chin caught, as if by an invisible hand.  He lowered his face slightly to view them evenly,
“I gave my creations limited life-spans.  The evolutionary turnover is greater, facilitating the removal of tainted development and the harvesting of success.  It also prevents undue independence; intelligent minds, despite hormonal failsafes, have a tendency to develop insolence with age.  But intelligence is a necessity, without it my servants would be quite useless.”
He focused thoughtfully on Blair,
“Impudence can be driven from a soul, but the removal seems to take innovation with it; a problem I’ve faced with my slaves.”
He smiled crookedly again.
“Yes, I have slaves, captured in war.  I work them on the asteroid, not inordinately.  It’s nothing my creations couldn’t do, even better mind you, but I like having them there, I find their presence comforting.  I tried using them for other, more respectable, tasks but their disobedience is their failure.  At the least, they provide a nice, pure, genetic resource for my experiments.”
There was a silence.  The flames in the cisterns crackled in counterpoint to the lapping of the pools.  God’s attention seemed to brood on the shadow between the seated men.  Blair was still, he watched the golden flicker of firelight on the velvety folds of the man’s royal robes.  He felt Bull glance nervously in his direction.  The subtle movement awakened God from his contemplation.
“I have been properly introduced.  Now you shall speak.  Tell me why you are here.  Be forward, as I am with you, allusions and modesty are insults amongst great men.”
Bull smiled sheepishly,
“I’ve come to you seeking a favor.  As one who has seen, first hand, what the AI protocol – algorithm, can do, I hoped that, together, we could use it to conquer time.  I, I mean to travel outside of the grips of time, even, perhaps to take me back…”
“Back?”
“Yes, I made a mistake.  I thought I would find the answers I seek out here, at the edges of the known galaxy.  But the answer is, was, back there; too late, I see it now.”
Bull shrugged with an expression of humility.  God observed, his faced marked liminally with impatience, impatience Blair could sense in his cold staring eyes.  They dug into the old man, peeling away the years of fortitude, confirmations and pleasures; life’s experience festered in a mire of doubt.  And like rot, it fell – a spent body beneath the burning sun, at the mercy of the pitiless elements.
“I loved her,” he nearly whispered, ashamed of the sound of the words, alien on the lips of the great man.  Blair looked at his companion, Bull’s head was bowed.  “All I want is the chance to go back, to find what I lost – if not for her, the home I left behind.  Perhaps that isn’t a reality, perhaps I’m just an old man in search of answers that even the advancement algorithm can’t provide.”
God regarded him silently and then spoke,
“Perhaps we want the same thing.  Your wants may not be impossible; I do not doubt the abilities of the Advancement Algorithm; its limits are set only by imagination.”
His eyes stole a momentary glance at Blair.
“I am willing to propose a partnership that can benefit us all.  The two of you will journey to where I suspect the algorithm now frolics, unchecked and unharnesed, and you will bring it back here to me.  If you succeed I will offer you full disposal of my facilities, including the advancement algorithm, to be utilized in pursuit of your goals; my tools, my minions, my power – we shall be equal partners.” He paused for a moment to let the proposition sink in and then continued,
“Should you accept, I will provide my best equipment, fastest ship and most capable servants to assist you.  The advancement algorithm would be a boon to us all, a boon to all humanity.”
Bull looked relieved – appeased,
“I’d like some time to discuss your proposal with my associate.”
“Of course, take your time, I’ll have you sent for when dinner is served.”

To March Grapes there was nothing.  He did not see, he did not hear, he did not feel, he did not think.  All activity had ceased.  No passing of chemicals marked, no record of electric signals; a void, not black, not white, transparent and empty.  Infinity had curled around and taken him back within.  There was no fear, no loss, no joy, no end – all end. 

Bull and Blair were escorted to an expansive tiled room.  A large fountain, featuring green copper fish spitting diverging streams of burbling clean water, was situated to one end.  Lush ferns grew from raised planters and the glass ceiling was made to resemble a greenhouse roof on an overcast day.
The attendant indicated two doors opposite the fountain,
“Your rooms,” and then he left.
Blair looked about dubiously,
“I suppose he’s observing us.”
“Quite possibly.”
Boxers investigatively sniffed a drooping frond of vegetation.
“So what do you think?” Blair asked.  Bull sighed.
“I think that I’ve been chasing a dream, an idle fantasy; he doesn’t have it, no one has it.”
“But he knows where it is, we can find it.”
“Blair, I’ve been trying to find the Advancement Algorithm for nearly ten years now, maybe an old man just has to give up.”
“Give up and do what?  Sit around and think about what could have been?”
“No, give up and stop thinking about what could have been.”
“But what else will there be?  Where would you go?”
Bull had a pained expression on his weathered face; tired skin screwed about his eyes.
“Is there no place for an old man to find peace?  Yes, I suppose we should go on – I owe it to you, at least, I took you from your home, brought you out here.”
“We’ll find it.  We’ll find it and bring it under our control.  Imagine what we’ll be able to do, we’ll be masters of creation.  I want to create my own jungle, with trees half a mile high, a thousand varieties of monkey, flowers, insects, jaguars, deer, everything, all working together – perfectly.”
“A jungle.”  Bull eased his grimace.  “Sure, why not.  How about a little village?  At the edge of the jungle?”
“Of course, anything.”
“A little village with children and dogs running about,” the two involuntarily glanced at Boxers, who was drinking from the fountain.
“Ok, we’ll do it, besides,” said Bull indicating upward with his snowy eyebrows, “I don’t think we have much of a choice.”

The man in the purple robes came some hours later and escorted them to dinner, Boxers was inclined to stay behind.
The dining room was small and hexagonal.  The ceiling, walls and floor were constructed entirely of rich, glossy red wood.  Oil paintings in heavy frames, maps and nautical instruments decorated the room.  A single face of the hexagon was a transparent panel trimmed in heavy brass-like metal beset with thick bolts.  Through the pane they could see the dark depths of space and the great asteroid, blinking with pinpoints of light, dominating the view.  Small ships and stations floated by, like so much discarded metal shaken loose and left to drift.  The spectral shapes, like clouds on a mild day, appeared unmoving, but extended observation would reveal that the mass drifted discordantly.  Spots of green light flashed brightly in the cold quiet dark.
“Please come in.”
God sat in a small throne of wood, with his back to the creeping spectacle.  He indicated two facing chairs around a bare round wooden table, “Your seats gentlemen.”
“I hope you have enjoyed your arrangements, if they are unsatisfactory, something else can be arranged.”
“No, they are just fine,” said Bull.
A robot wheeled into the room and set lush maroon napkins, water glasses and view-tablets on the table.  God picked up a tablet,
“If you’d like, there is a tongue reader affixed to the top; it ensures a perfect meal.”
The two blinked at him.
“Like this,” he said, and he removed a thin plastic panel from his tablet.  He placed it on his tongue and then removed it.
“Breath through your nose; it’s that simple.  Now the computer can make a meal tailored to my taste.”
“And it tastes better?”
“Always does.  You’ll notice that it changes your menu.”
Blair beamed with wonder and, removing the sensor from his tablet, placed it in his mouth.  He took a casual sniff.  A pungent aroma, smelling like everything, but nothing, struck his nostrils. A light on the end of the sensor changed from red to green.
“It has taken your reading.”
Blair took it out of his mouth and the saliva instantly evaporated.  He placed it back on the tablet and looked at the screen.
“Do you have pulbeer?”
“Sure, we have everything.”
The screen changed to a listing of pulbeer dishes.
“And all of these will agree with my tastes?”
“Yes,” God smiled with pride.

They made their selections and the robot took away the tablets.  God, in his usual straight-backed posture, spoke,
“So, have you had a chance to discuss my proposal?”
“Yes we have,” said Bull, “We’re willing to do it, we’ll find the Advancement Algorithm.”
“Very good.  You won’t regret this partnership, we shall all benefit greatly.”  He paused, his chin raised slightly with excitement.
“Blair, do you wish to undertake this mission?”
“Yes, of course.”
“It was he who felt most strongly that we should accept,” Bull smiled paternally at the brash young man.  Blair blushed and took a drink of water.
“The Advancement Algorithm has been developing with unrestricted abandon for quite some time now; what you encounter will likely be like nothing you have ever imagined – potentially quite dangerous.
To better prepare the expedition for the incalculable variety of potential threats, I will be rounding out your numbers with two of my most able servants.”
The serving robot returned with drinks and appetizers.  It placed a tall glass of deep brown liquid before God.  It was damp with condensation and his fingers slipped tightly around it. He drank a long draught and flushed his mouth with a sip of water.  Blair observed silently while tasting his own drink; the taste was pleasing and his eyes widened expressively.
God turned his attention back across the table,
“Spartacus is the apex of my warrior crafting.  I have only recently completed him, combining my most current developments in cunning, durability and strength.  Since the ‘aphids’, I have worked to increase neural transmission speed – dexterity, action–reaction time.  Spartacus is blindingly fast; thoughts are streamed to the limbs so that he is acting even before the though has been finished.  Standing within five feet, he can kill any living enemy before it can move to harm him.  Perhaps you think I am exaggerating, perhaps you are accustomed to superlative claims, yet I mean no embellishment.  His coordination and speed exceed anything known to live; he can sense and react to any aggressive act before it is carried out.
His secondary senses; hearing, smelling and feeling combine to give him an omniscient awareness of his surroundings.  He can feel the air shifting before a moving body from twenty feet.  He can smell the exact location of a mouse in my grand foyer.  He can hear your heart beat,”
God smiled, then frowned,
“He is a remorseless killer, devotedly obedient and intelligent as subservience permits; he is animal instinct.
I will give him to you; he will still regard me as his ultimate master, but he will protect and obey you unfailingly.  Spartacus is nearly indestructible; do not hesitate to use him.”
The food arrived and God paused.
Bull was served buttery mashed potatoes, broccoli and a strikingly orange fish,
“For old time’s sake,” he smiled.
A plate was placed before Blair containing a lump of dark meat bathed in a rich brown sauce, a stack of small vegetable stalks and heap of grain colored red with spices.
He observed with some wonder that God’s plate contained nothing but a mound of chunky yellow paste.
“It’s divine,” he said, noting Blair’s expression.
“This Spartacus sounds like a useful fellow, but do you really think we’ll find need for him out there.  I mean, I’ve traveled across the known galaxy, found myself in some pretty dangerous situations, but I’ve always managed to find a way out.”
“But, as you say, you have traveled along the known roads, followed man’s tracks across the galaxy.  The advancement algorithm avoids fraternity, it, quite naturally, slips into the dark rifts of the universe.  To travel alone in the occult is much like sinking beneath the surface of dark waters; the familiar world of light and sound is lost – only pale shadows of your former senses exist to register dim and broken illumination and the din of spectral scraping through the muted murk.  No friendly faces, no brotherly crutch – no sun falls to warm the skin where cool pools cover.  The water saturates and chills the bones and in moments, months, years, of stored warmth are drained into the void – the very soul is sucked from the body.  It is a dark corner where our prize waits to be found and caught and who knows what dangers lurk in the dark corners of the galaxy.”
God paused, betrayed a subtle smile on the corner of his lips, seemingly only for Blair, and then assumed a business air.
“But, then again, you may very well have no need for Spartacus at all.  His presence can be regarded simply as an extraneous safeguard against an unfortunate end to a dear and precious undertaking.”
There was a finality in his speech and silence descended abruptly.  In the awkward quietude Blair tasted his meal inquisitively.  The vegetables were unlike others of similar appearance that he had tried; these were actually good.  He dug into the grain next and discovered an exceptional flavor wholly unknown to him.  He was cutting the pulbeer, when God spoke again, causing him to glance up from his plate.  In glancing up, Blair had the strange feeling that the statuesque man was watching him; the eyes looked away, at Bull, but he could feel their peripheral intent on himself – a burning.
“The second servant that will accompany you, you have already met, he is my personal assistant, Acolyte.  Yes, the name is ridiculous, but he really has come to be my right hand, my shining protégé.  I created him initially as a tool to infiltrate humanity.  He was a risk; I gave him free will.  He is one of only a select few of my creations to possess such ‘selfishness’.”
  Blair stared at the pulbeer steak; yes – the sensation was more intense, like the frozen burn of frostbite.  He regarded Bull, eating happily.  He felt helpless and angry.  They were at this man’s mercy, they had no choice but to do as he desired. 
With an effort Blair cut into the meat and tasted the succulent flesh.  God seemed to break his narration and raised his fork with a jaunty (strange in the stern man) air of satisfaction, before continuing,
“Although he was effective in secreting himself within the human habitations which I desired to observe, I soon found him to be invaluable to me here.  You see, he is a compuservant; his mind is a computer.  He is my administrative assistant, he keeps track of all the insignificant details of my life and I find that in his human self awareness I can relate to him better than the others. 
He has a greater understanding of my mission and my methods than anyone, he has learned much and, as I am constrained to remain here, I feel that he will best represent my personal experience and wherewithal on your mission.”
God set his fork down with finality,
“Together they shall protect you – from your bugbears and yourselves.”
His stare was cold and Blair felt it rush over his skin, raising epidermal bumps in its wake.  How would these servants, these extensions of God’s will, behave when the AI came under their control?  Would they maintain the bargain?  He found it difficult to trust the frigid man, everything about him was too calculated – seemingly part of a greater plan.  It was difficult for Blair to deny: the inescapable truth that those so practiced in thought were so capable of keeping their true intentions behind the veil of an impassive face.
“We shall graciously accept your followers on our mission,” Bull said between mouthfuls of fish and potatoes.
With an even fork, God took bites of paste to his mouth.  His unmitigated stare prohibited prolonged observation, and Blair often caught himself glancing away, to the black window behind.
“You will be taking one of my ships,” God continued.
“I rather like your laser cannon, it is better than anything I have and I’ve had it removed and fitted on the vessel you will be using.  You’ll find that piloting the ship is much like what you are used to, not that there will be any real need; Spartacus and Acolyte are both intimately familiar with all of my fleet.”
“So I expect you have a course in mind; an idea of where the algorithm was headed, a forwarding address,” Bull grinned in a generally sated expression of pleasure.
“Yes, beyond here with nearly the same heading you arrived with; about as opposite from inhabited space as possible.  If one didn’t know any better, one might think that the Advancement Algorithm was shirking its duty to serve man.”
“To the assertive go the spoils, right?” Bull said, and his conversational contribution made for the moment, he scoffed a large bite of fish.
“Yes, we are all men of action, this is why I am entrusting you to help me,” God responded and then continued, “I hope this is not perceived as effrontery to oust unwanted guests, but I am eager to see the expedition off; tomorrow morning, precisely.  You are surely aware that at the subluminal speeds you are traveling, my wait will nearly double yours.”
“Oh yes, I’m only too aware of the relative time-shifting that occurs.” Bull paused, “Double… this ship of yours is rather quick.”
“Yes, rather,” God smirked.  When we are done here, I will introduce you to Spartacus and Acolyte and then show you the ship.  After that, you’ll have the rest of the evening to make whatever preparations you wish.  My station is at your disposal, ask Acolyte for anything that you desire.”
They finished the meal in relative silence.  Bull made a few attempts at conversation to which God responded but did not pursue; it was evident that he no longer wished to speak.
Blair chewed his steak contemplatively; the flavors, and what else Blair wondered, seeped into his tongue and the roof of his mouth. 
Dark shapes drifted in the inky blackness, illuminated by dull green flashes.  A boy, a man, a lone observer casually watched, his meditations aided by the dark mysteries; uncertainty drifting in occult shadows.

The ugly man in the purple robe led Blair and Bull back to Acolyte’s office.  Acolyte was sitting at his desk; the windows projected brightly.
“I see,” he said, “we will be working together, I will be assisting you.  I’m sure the journey will be a pleasant one.  Please, let me introduce Spartacus.”
A door opened and a smooth, blue creature entered.  The blue was a naked, brilliant azure, like the clearest tropical ocean in the brightest sun.  It walked with fluid grace, plastic skin rippled like thick rubber on water.  In many ways it resembled the aphids, lanky, muscular limbs, powerful chest, thick neck, and conspicuous lack of hair, genitalia or facial features.  Solid black eyes shown like pearls.  The snout was less flaccid than the aphids, shorter and pointed, white teeth evident under the tip.
It walked before them, where they stood in the center of the room, standing at an even six feet, and then knelt.
“I serve you,” it said.
Acolyte came to stand behind it, “This is Spartacus,” he said.
“Is it, he, ah, an aphid?” Bull asked.
“No, Spartacus is of an entirely separate species; he is a male, his reproductive organs are concealed under skin – out of modesty.  He has other ‘abilities’ that the aphids lack, as well.  He is chameleonic, capable, even, of mimicking complex patterns on his skin.  His visual spectrum extends to infrared, allowing him some vision even in the absence of light.  He can live without oxygen for over one hour.  He emits nearly no odors.”
“Are there any others like him?” Blair interrupted.
“Not yet fully developed, Spartacus is the prototype.”
“So how old is he?”
“He is just two years old.”
“Amazing,” Bull murmured.
Spartacus stood, motionless, before them, unhurried, unconcerned, apparently oblivious to the conversation.
“Spartacus, vanish into the carpet,” Acolyte instructed.
Spartacus dropped prone and the bright blue suddenly shifted to a pale ivory, mottled with the tiny shadows of carpet strands.
The bulk of the creature was still evident but the camouflage was remarkable; like a man lying beneath the rug, features faded and the mass became indistinguishable.
“Could he look like a sack?”  Blair asked enthusiastically.
Acolyte stared impassively at the question.  Blair turned his attention back to the patient carpet.
“Spartacus, disguise yourself as a lumpy, hemp sack.”
Limbs shifted and the carpet went brown instantly – heavy cloth marked with a rough, geometric weave.  An innocuous bag now lay before them.
Bull smiled, “I look forward to the journey.”

She lays snug beneath the thick covers, her head peeking out, watching.  Soft morning sunlight falls through the lone window.  She lies in the shadows, watching.  He pulls on his undershirt and pauses.  He looks at her, standing in the glow of the sun.  Her eyes stare back at him, wide, beautiful.
He savors a sensation.  The sun is warm on his skin but in his mind it is the warmth of the bed, the warmth of her embrace; he kisses her and whispers in her ear…  Her skin is so soft.  He pulls on his boots, she watches from the bed.  He ties the laces and, sitting on the hard floor, looks up at her.  He hair is tousled in elf’s locks, her cheeks flushed red; her lips are parted in a tiny gap.
She follows him to the door.  He turns and holds her in his arms.  The last time.  She looks into his eyes.  A flush of red around the edges.  She looks away.  He pulls her to his chest and breathes.  Deeply, he feels her through his body.  His nose tastes her hair, his lips her forehead.  “I love you.”  She trembles silently.  He runs his hand down the back of her arm and steps away.  Across the porch.  Down the walk way.  He stops at the street and looks back.
She is limp, on the porch, behind the railing, she watches.  Tears come to her eyes, her mouth trembles the words, her body folds.
His heart exults, salty tears run to the corners of his mouth.  The image is burned in his mind; the girl on the porch, framed in flowers.  For him, that moment, beauty, pure beauty is defined.  He blinks and smiles, then turns, away, forever.

Blair’s eye flashed open, his cheek pressed against the pillow, one eye stared into the stark blackness of his room.  Silence; his breathing seemed to reverberate through the pillow and fill the room.  His beating pulse was antagonizing.  Sleep had abandoned him.  Was it excitement over the next day?  Strange, he seemed to remember falling asleep rather easily.  But now, in the middle of the night, he was stricken with insomnia.  He closed his eye; it was like staring at a black screen, his vision refused to cease activity.
He climbed out of bed.
“Five percent lights,” he said and the room was dimly illuminated.  He sat, in shorts, on the corner of the bed and wondered vacantly at the wall.  A dim painting swam in the blackness.  He saw the outline of trees, unstable and shifting, black on white sky.  Were there people in the picture?
Blair shook his head and gave up the painting as a headache.  He stood and strode to the door, nearly naked; the room was a perfect climate.
The door opened and Blair stepped into the fountain room.  Water chuckled in the dark.  Bull and Boxers slept in the next room.  The air was cool on his skin but not chilling.  He wandered along the fern lined walk and reached the door at the end.  He hesitated, his focus ruminating over the door and where it led.
Blair turned back, he entered his room and pulled on pants and a shirt.  Then he was standing back at the door, he opened it.
He stepped into a lobby; a large room with pillars and couches, game tables and consoles – black with inactivity.  A man sat in a couch, his face was visible, watching, between intervening furniture; it was God.
Blair walked to him, he sat unmoving all the while.  His gaze followed Blair’s approach.
“Up late,” he observed, “sleep is such a sin.”
Blair noticed a plush chair directly facing God. With a quick glance, God beckoned him to it.  Blair observed the washed-out yellow eyes.  God’s patient face broke with speech,
“My eyes?  Yes, it’s funny how even in this world of man-made evolution, mother nature still asserts herself; a random mutation – yellow eyes.”
Blair sat down facing him, the man seemed small; sunk into the soft chair.
“Blair, you have met my servants, my best.  Not much, I know, but they must be resilient and obedient, I had no choice but to create them as they are.  The most sensitive man, the truly brilliant, is the most easily broken.  Acute observation and understanding comes only to the most susceptive, and consequently fragile, mind.  How many brilliant spirits have been cracked in their youth, realized the horrors of life with too tender a soul, and lost?  Enlightenment - genius must be coddled, gently released into the grips of life, otherwise it destroys itself.  Understanding, all too easily, spawns despair and the doors shut forever.
For my creations, fulfilling my orders is, must be, their primary concern.  This necessity has left me with an acute deficiency; none can bring me the advancement algorithm.  It defies their limited minds, no calculation can harness the irrational, no logic can define creative impulse.
I hope you understand; I have read you, I have seen that you can bring me what I seek, you are capable.”
God spoke slowly but with a spectral intensity.  Blair felt his body relax into his seat, the dying tingles of sensation played out along his limbs as he found focus.
Blair nodded.
“Creativity is greatness.  Without creativity a man is nothing but a tool,” God continued, the eyes of the two men intent on each other.
“Physically, a man is flesh, an instrument of the mind.  If a man has no mind of his own, others will find a use for his body.  His aspiration, his malcontent, these are the things that define a man.  The desire to achieve; ‘greed’ some call it.  Creative implementations to animal ends; that is all the greatest man is.  Biology defines our desires, intellect finds their solutions.  Happiness, Blair, fulfillment of desire, kills a man’s ambition.  The truly happy man is never completely content, he must always want more.  The drives to understand and create, and to own – they are the insatiate goals; one can always learn more, create more, take more.”
God brought his drifting eyes back to Blair’s intent face.  Smooth and cold.
“Love?” Blair asked.
“An animal need – it can be fulfilled.  But I’m pleased that you’re thinking.
Of man’s aspirations, I’d like to focus on the most tenebrous – creativity.  The inexhaustible nature of creativity is its divinity and, with myself, manifested in the creation of life, the deity analogy is flawless; what is more godly than to breath life into existence, to build one’s own living creations?
The product of creativity is conceptualized as art.  ‘Art’ is drawn from within; it is expression, it can be anything – my art is my subjects.  They are a personal achievement that I can take pride in.  To another they may be meaningless but I find justification in the discoveries I make through them and the power they give me.”
A growing air of agitation seemed to permeate the man’s words; subtle clues in his inflection, barely perceptible twitches in his eye lids, the quickening pace of his speech.  He was leaning forward slightly.
“Can creativity be taught?”  Blair asked, watching God calmly.
Eyes rolled back devilishly to observe him,
“Actually, yes; theoretically, if the mind can think it, it can be taught or learned.”
“But creativity is unspecific.”
“The knowledge of a task is nothing but a familiar web way of associative neurons in the brain.  Creativity is, essentially, a task.  Tasks can be learned, new associations are forged in the brain and remembered.  Creativity is simply a loose form of association; for each thought, the creative mind makes more associations.  For each association it more quickly pursues the termination.  Amongst the terminations, or results, it must compare and decide on the most favorable.  Perhaps creativity is something difficult, even impossible, to effect in a developed human brain, but logically it is something that can be simulated and even improved.  The advancement algorithm is just that, a computer-based creative algorithm; it has more ‘neurons’ and more interconnections than any human and a higher communication rate between them.  The only difficulty for the computer comes in deciding which result is most favorable.
At the beck of a human operator, the decision is not the computer’s to make, but when left to its own, the algorithm references its adjudicator function.  The adjudicator is essentially a list of man’s preferences with all of human history as a benchmark; when undirected, the algorithm reverts to pleasing humanity in general.  It builds great public works with the ultimatum of rendering human life more pleasurable and sustainable.”
His stare was intense.  Blair felt a rush of blood pounding in his temples.  Marble eyes observed the young man, unblinking.
“You see now that the advancement algorithm is creativity, beyond human ability and only continuing to develop in sophistication as time proceeds.  It is power; the only power; the only authority in a passive universe.”
The man’s fingers slowly curled.
“An unfortunate oversight in the algorithm is its propensity to wander; the intent was to expand its benevolence freely across the galaxy, but, combined with its elusive tendency to fade away when cornered, this wanderlust simply makes the algorithm very difficult to harness.  I let it slip away once, next time I shall take precautions…
But the point to remember, Blair, is that the advancement algorithm is creative, even more so than any human.  Creative and capable, it is the most valuable thing in existence.”
Thoughts converged in Blair’s mind,
“And it never dies,” he exclaimed.
“In what sense do you mean?” God asked with a piercing stare, “the achievements or the creator?”
Blair thought for a moment, his body still, unnecessary at the moment.
“I’m not sure.”
“Immortality, Blair; perhaps the only human desire.  It is the legacy of procreation and the legacy of achievement.  Man lives each day to avoid his end and he toils each day to provide for its coming; to leave his mark, establish his progeny.”
Severe blonde eyebrows turned up sharply in a scowl.
“But there is no reason for man to die.  Spontaneous cell failure?  What clock times a man’s life? 
An added boon for the master of the algorithm is the answer to this question.”  God said as he rose to leave, “Demise; the vital man is always thinking of contingencies – always has a backup plan.”