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The average layperson might think that the use of portals would result in an instantaneous trip through space. That’s what portals do, they would reasonably think. They get you places faster. And the thing is, they would be right.
What the average layperson fails to consider are the external factors that surround the use of portals: the distance between one’s ship and the actual opening of the portal, the strength of a particular ship’s engines, the distance one may have to travel to actually reach their destination upon exiting the portal, the fact that an instantaneous descent into any planet’s atmosphere equals an equally instantaneous death.
And worst of all: The icy silence that may stretch out between one and one’s co-pilot, given some rather horrible revelations that unfolded just a few hours earlier.
Orth Godlove is not the average layperson, and he is all too familiar with the disappointing reality of logistics.
If the trip truly was instantaneous, then Orth could mutter something about the ship piloting itself and go stare at a wall in his bedroom until they were off September. The Chime could go off to complete their mission, leaving Orth behind to watch the ship. He could stare at his wall and silently rage until the Chime returned, their mission hopefully completed, and they could escape the planet before Rigour killed them all.
Theoretically, a Divine could handle piloting one measly ship through one measly portal. If Orth was the average layperson, maybe he would leave that Divine to do so. Unfortunately, Orth continues not to be the average layperson, and his sense of duty keeps him tied to the copilot chair within The Kingdom Come’s cockpit. Even more unfortunate: Orth must spend the next three hours (possibly longer, if things go awry) sitting twenty inches away from the newly designated as “Least Trustworthy Member of the Chime.”
If Orth was the average layperson, or at least a person capable of squashing the last bit of sentimentality hidden in the depths of his heart, he would let the next three hours pass in complete silence.
As previously established, Orth is not either of those. So he opens his big mouth and says, “So… Do you go by Liberty and Discovery now?”
The robot that he used to know as AuDy does not turn to face him. “I will still respond to AuDy.”
Then why does this room feel so different? Orth wants to say. But he knows who AuDy used to be, and if this ancient new being is anything like the robot he knew, that question will get him nowhere. Instead, he tries a different approach: logic. “But you’re not AuDy anymore. You said it earlier. Before all that,” Orth pauses long enough to wave his arms towards wherever Ibex must be concocting plans and causing problems, “happened. You spent a decade not being a Divine. Now you’re a Divine again.”
“I’m still AuDy,” they say, sharp enough to betray their annoyance. Annoyance is one of the few emotions AuDy’s monotone voice is very effective at conveying. “I’m also Liberty and Discovery. They are me. I am them.”
It doesn’t make sense. Divines aren’t regular robots. Trying to call a Divine a regular robot is like passing off a printing press as a pen. AuDy’s sentience makes them unique, sure, and maybe Orth has spent more than one long afternoon after a mission briefing wondering just who gave a parking robot a mind of their own, and why. But AuDy contains none of the terror and might of a Divine. AuDy does not destroy planets and ruin lives. AuDy parks cars and drives ships.
At Orth’s lingering silence, AuDy speaks up. Maybe Orth would chuckle at that, in a different situation. He bets AuDy thinks that Orth couldn’t grasp their first statement, and elaborated for the sake of his simple human mind. “You are Orth Godlove. You’re not more Godlove than you are Orth, correct? Not more Orth than you are Godlove?”
“They’re both my name,” Orth says.
“It is the same for me. Liberty and Discovery, AuDy — they are different, and they carry different histories, but they are the same.”
Except they aren’t the same at all. Orth didn’t spend a decade hiding his lineage from the rest of himself. His family history, who he is now — those have always been immutable. That, and it’s not like his parents were the closest things to gods this universe gets.
Orth covers his face with his hands. All of the Chime are hard to work with. Mako is physically unable to sit through a briefing without going on some odd tangent, Aria’s desire to do good sabotages her ability to do her job well, Cassander is far too easily influenced by whoever happens to have their ear to be truly reliable, and AuDy is rude and unyielding. Yet rude and unyielding are worlds away from being the very thing your enemies are named after.
Once that thought appears in Orth’s mind, he can’t banish it. Even now, Divine or not, the Chime trust AuDy with their lives. Orth once trusted others that easily, back when he was a younger and stupider man. He is not so young, and he is hopefully not so stupid.
“What about Liberty and Discovery Automatic Corp? They’re named after you,” Orth says. “Why help us, if you’re aligned with them?”
“I haven’t been there in a decade. They’ve been fine under Ibex’s watch,” AuDy says, as if Orth had asked about a spare pet AuDy left to be watched while on vacation.
“I— It doesn't matter to you!?”
“A corporation, no matter how large, lasts until either the money runs dry, or the founders all die. They may be causing us headaches now, but should Rigour be left unchecked, their money will all be useless, and they will all be dead. What does matter to me, and what should also matter to you, is stopping Rigour. Now, we’re almost at the portal. Grab your controls. I need help keeping the ship stabilized.”
Orth does his job. He grabs the co-pilot’s controls and stabilizes the ship. The next few hours are spent in an uneasy silence, broken only by the beeping protests of The Kingdom Come. It wasn’t built for space travel, and especially not for space travel as rough as this. Somehow, they make do.
Not soon enough, September, cast in its golds and reds, comes into view.
They begin the slow descent down.
Orth steals a glance at AuDy. They don’t wear tension the way a human does, but the tight grasp they have around their controls is a tell-tale sign of stress. He looks down at his own hands, and finds them slack against the main console. Rigour must be the most terrible god of all, if even other gods fear its name.
But Liberty and Discovery gave up their godhood. At least for a little while. “I don’t get it,” Orth says. “Why give up being a Divine? Of all things… why become a parking robot?”
“Cultivate saplings,” AuDy says instantly. They seem to pause, as if surprised by their own answer. Maybe that was one of the directives Liberty and Discovery were programmed with. Even now, the phrase sits oddly in the air, as if neither AuDy nor their Divine self seem comfortable with the answer.
“And in practice that means…?”
AuDy pauses. “That was something I was once told long ago. Cherish the newly discovered. Nurture their potential. But what’s left to discover, when you’ve been alive longer than galaxies have spun in space?”
“You wanted a change.” Orth can understand that, even if he can’t exactly relate. Chasing change is for the young and the endlessly energetic, not old broken men like Orth.
“I suppose so. I don’t really remember now, but if I had to guess… I must have wanted to see what it would be like for the world to be new. To be something smaller and simpler. And the world became new, even if it was constrained to whatever parking lot I happened to be assigned to.”
The thing is, Orth disagrees. AuDy was anything but small and simple. AuDy was a marvel. A pain in his ass, sure, but a marvel nonetheless. And there was just a chance before this, Orth thought, that something might have been worth asking for. That, had they not needed to escape the planet to evade Ibex’s (fake) assassination threat, maybe Orth would have asked AuDy to… something. Find an evening they both had free and go see a show, or go bowling, or— he doesn’t really know, the thought had never stuck around long enough to see itself to conclusion.
Orth wasn’t looking for anything in particular. Nothing that AuDy wasn’t willing to give him. A companion, ideally. A friend, at the very least. It had been a long time since he had made one of those.
Now, there’s no point. If they’re exceedingly lucky, the Chime will make it out of September alive.
That, and AuDy is a Divine. How could Orth ever matter? He’s nothing more than a comma in the novel of their life.
But Orth doesn’t ask that question. He asks one whose answer he could better stomach. “So if you’re a Divine, then what about your candidate?” Stomaching the fact that AuDy is a Divine is getting easier; the more they talk, the less the betrayal of the reveal stings. Instead, curiosity takes its place, though Orth isn’t sure if this is actually an improvement.
“I have no need for a candidate. I tried once, long ago. It… did not work out.” AuDy says. If they had a face, they would be grimacing.
“I thought all Divines needed a candidate.”
“I need you to be my co-pilot, not my candidate.”
“I don’t— I would never be your candidate,” Orth says, aghast.
“Hm,” AuDy says. It isn’t a hum, but an actual, voiced hm. “That’s probably for the best, then.”
Of all the Chime, Orth trusts AuDy the most. Trusted.
Trusts. Even now. Even after this. If Rigour ripped open the ship’s hull, Orth would trust AuDy to pilot them to safety.
Orth trusts their capabilities. Their reflexes. He trusts them to watch his back — countless times, he’s fallen asleep to the sight of AuDy monitoring the controls for the both of them. And when he woke up, with his neck and back sore (since a man his age shouldn’t be sleeping in a cramped chair so often), he would still see AuDy at the captain’s chair. And AuDy wouldn’t comment on Orth falling asleep. They’d just ask for Orth’s help with some small task, and Orth would do it.
They’ve formed a good enough partnership, Orth thinks. The cockpit is AuDy’s now, but pieces of Orth have made their way back inside. There’s a small cart next to the co-pilot seat, so Orth has a place to put his drink down. There’s an extra pillow off to the side for when he falls asleep. There’s a jacket just behind his chair for when he gets cold.
“You’ve taken the news more badly than anyone else here,” AuDy says. “The Chime trusted me with little hesitation, but I still feel as though your trust in me has been injured.”
Three hours ago, that would have been completely true. Now, the truth is a little more muddled. AuDy is different, perhaps, but not a complete stranger. At the end of the day, Orth still trusts them. But does Orth still want that show, or that concert, or whatever it could have been? Would AuDy even accept that invitation?
“That’s… disheartening, to say the least,” AuDy finishes.
“I’ve spent a lot more time around Divines than the others,” Orth says. “And I’ve spent nearly as much time aligned against the people you now call allies. Ibex may be willing to work with us now, but you know as well as I do what happened last time he offered to work with me.”
“If you are worried that I’m going to sell you out to Ibex or to any part of the Righteous Vanguard, I won’t. Even if they still wanted you dead, I would not. That, and I would like it if we could return to something close to what we used to be. You are not someone I wish to lose.”
Now that’s— that’s—
That’s unfortunate.
At Orth’s silence, AuDy continues. “As we have previously established, I need a co-pilot, and my teammates are all terrible at flying ships. That, and I’ve never met any human I’ve enjoyed sitting in silence with for hours at a time more than I have you.”
The grin comes to Orth’s face before he can think better. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Hopefully we can do this again. Provided Rigour doesn’t kill us all,” says AuDy.
Something in Orth trembles. Some small, terrible voice tells him that anything he wants to say, he should say now. Divine or not, they may never meet again after this.
So, Orth tries. “If we get out of this alive, let’s go see a show. Something nice, back on Counterweight. My treat.”
If AuDy were a human, maybe they would have huffed. Maybe they would have rolled their eyes. But AuDy is something else entirely, and so they simply say, “Okay.”
-
Years and years later, Orth finds himself on a planet he has not often visited, on the very edge of the Golden Branch Star Sector. Aside from a very tiny downtown, a few factories, and a corporate building filled with representatives he doesn’t like, there’s hardly anything here.
This planet’s biggest draw are its forests. Beautiful ones, with towering trees and strangely mystifying animals peeking out from beneath the leaves. Orth spends one morning just marveling at the beauty of this place. He also spends one very long evening telling this planet’s Vice President of Product Acquisition and Interplanetary Trade that no, under no circumstance will the cost of obtaining new transport vessels will not be subsidized by the government.
There’s one park on this side of the planet, and that’s where he goes after his meeting. The climate here is lovely, with warm days and nights just crisp enough to keep you awake. This place could possibly be a great tourist destination, if only the entire planet wasn’t private corporate property.
He really hasn’t been here often. Still, the wind greets him like an old friend, keeping him company on his walk.
By the time he decides to go back to his hotel (the only hotel on the whole planet), it’s already far later than any train or bus would run. The public transit here relies mostly on the factories’ schedules. They don’t run much later than the last shift of the day.
Orth isn’t worried. He hasn’t been worried about catching a ride for a long time.
He makes his way to the edge of the park. A single paved road carves its way through the soft ground, leading off into the dark horizon. A single car waits there for him, its passenger door already open. He gets in without hesitation.
The driver’s seat is empty. Self-driving cars aren’t popular on this planet, but he’s not surprised.
It’s also not standard to sit in the passenger seat of a self-driving car — the AI, if it’s very old, can get confused if their passenger moves around too much and thinks that the passenger is trying to take control of the car. This time, it would be rude not to.
“Hello,” Orth says. It’s not common to greet self-driving cars, but for Orth, it’s now a habit. “Is there anything left to do downtown?” he asks.
“There’s one showing left at the movie theater before it closes for the night. If we leave now, we can make it,” says the car. The voice is robotic and steely, barely legible above the crackle of static and old gears. This is an old car.
“Let’s go,” says Orth.
The hour-long drive to the theater is quiet. Orth prefers it that way. It makes him think of old times. The car pulls up to the curb without any fanfare. Orth may have greeted the car, but he doesn’t need to say farewell as it drives off. He needs to get in before the movie starts, after all.
This planet is a sleepy planet on work nights, so the theater is empty when Orth enters. He takes a seat in the very center of the theater — the best seat in the house, in his opinion. As he sits, a new hum enters the projector. One that he’s never heard before, but that is familiar all the same.
Orth travels often. Sometimes he spends the night in a place other than his own home; most of the time, he spends the night on a planet other than his own. Yet, no matter where he goes in the universe, he is never alone.
There is always someone waiting for him. In the car, in the network, in the spinning reel of this old-timey projector that hasn’t been updated in decades.
There is always someone familiar, and he is always glad to see them.