“You went into hypersleep?”
“We thought that when we awoke from our frozen state, we would be able see our new world with our own eyes and spend the end of our days under an open sky instead of an artificial one.”
“So why the avatars?”
“Our lifeless bodies could survive over millennia. But our souls could not. The soul wastes away during the inactivity of cryostasis and cannot be revived after thawing. As a result, the body dies with it. The only solution was to create avatars that could occupy themselves in the cavitys during the flight.”
“But what could you do in the cavitys as disembodied spirits?” Jeff asked.
“Do not be deceived. This is just an emergency avatar.”
“Emergency avatar?”
“I will come back to that. Our original avatars were exact replicas of us. We could use them like our actual bodies. They could feel love, joy… but also pain, anger, and hatred.”
The screen on the wall in front of Jeff lit up again. The characters disappeared and the body of an alien being appeared against a blue background. It had a leathery brown skin, two thin legs, two skinny arms with thin fingers, and a plump body with a big, lumpy brown head resting on a long neck with large, human-like eyes. Jeff was reminded of an old movie he’d seen as a kid, about an alien who kept trying to “phone home.”
“That’s you,” Jeff said.
“Yes, that is correct. That was my body.”
Something about the choice of words bothered Jeff. It took him a moment to realize what: “You said was. I thought your body is still somewhere on the ship in a cryogenic pod.”
“It is, but millions of years have passed. There are limits to our cryotechnology. My body is mostly decomposed and will no longer be viable outside the pod. I can feel it, I am dying. And it is the same for my companions.”
“But I still don’t understand why you didn’t reach your target world.”
“I’m coming to that. The spaceship was flown and operated by a crew of about a thousand individuals. I myself was part of the unit that took care of the reactors. Many of us are still doing so today.”
Jeff said nothing but his mind was racing. He was talking to a being that had been spooking around this ship for millions of years. The extraterrestrials were immortal because of their cryotechnology combined with their avatars. Or if not immortal, they at least led impossibly long lives. Jeff was sure there were many people—especially those getting on in years—who would happily be put in a cryopod and spend their days as an avatar, if it meant they could carry on their lives with a substitute body and never get old. But he didn’t understand where the alien was heading with its story. Only one thing was clear: something about the aliens’ plan had gone terribly wrong. “Please continue.”
“We set off. At the central core of the spaceship was the command center. This is where the commander—you would say captain—lay in a cryopod next to eleven of his closest staff.”
“And their avatars?” Jeff asked. “Were they also in this command center controlling the ship?”
“No,” the alien replied. “The ship itself was their avatar.”
Jeff tried to process what he was hearing. “The ship?”
“Correct. They merged their consciousnesses together and controlled the ship with their minds. The ship is their substitute body.”
It was beyond belief. After hearing about their slow hyperdrive, Jeff had assumed these aliens weren’t as advanced as humans, but in some aspects, they were clearly far ahead. “What happened then?”
“The twelve controllers were the best, brightest, most dedicated, and cleverest of our species.”
The alien paused a moment. Jeff was about to ask something when the creature continued. “But one of them was evil. Evil through and through—a psychopath, you would say in your language—and clever enough to hide it until after our departure. He was also telepathic; able to read and manipulate other people’s minds. We call him the demon.”
Jeff felt a chill go down his spine.
“After traveling through space for several years, it happened. Without warning, from one moment to the next. The demon took over control of the ship. He drove the other commanders, including the captain, mad. He managed to make them turn off their own cryopods, and they suffocated to death. Now he had sole control of the ship. Of all of its systems. The engines and the computers, but also the cryopods, the avatar generators, and the environmental simulation systems in the cavitys. With his telepathic powers, he was even able to override the security mechanisms and steer the avatars himself, while the spirits of the passengers were trapped in their substitute bodies.”
Jeff swallowed.
“The crew members, including myself, were robbed of their avatars and instead provided with emergency avatars with limited freedom of movement. He forced them to continue their work on the ship.”
“But not you?”
“No. My superior was one of the commanders in the center of the ship. While he was dying, he disconnected some of the cryogenic pods from the main system and isolated them with a protective shield. Including mine. I and around fifty other maintenance workers are the only free beings aboard this ship. We are condemned to walk through the bowels of the ship as ghosts, waiting for our bodies in the cryopods to decompose enough that we can die.
Jesus Christ! This creature had been transformed into a ghost by the demon ship when men on Earth still resembled monkeys.
“It’s a miracle you haven’t lost your mind,” Jeff whispered.
“Those of us who are left support each other and help one another stay sane. But little by little, my companions are dying off.”
“Has the… demon never tried to hunt you?”
“He cannot control us and he has no access to our cryopods. Which makes him powerless against us.”
“Have you never tried to kill him?”
“It would be pointless. He blocked all access to the center of the ship and closed himself off. We have no way of reaching him.”
Jeff remembered the gigantic hovering sphere. So there really was no way of reaching it.
“And what happened to the rest of you? To the passengers in the cavitys.”
“We cannot enter the cavitys with our emergency avatars, so we have never been able to see it with our own eyes. But traces in the ship’s surveillance computers indicate that the demon forced the avatars to hurt and kill each other. He is a sadist who takes pleasure from inflicting the greatest possible suffering on others. Because the avatars cannot die—or at least are recreated as soon as they are destroyed—he has a god-like power over all the beings in the cavitys. He forced our people to torture, mutilate, injure, and kill each other. And every day afresh, until their spirits could no longer bear it and their souls were extinguished.
Jeff could feel the tears running down his cheeks. The horror, the suffering, the pain. It was simply inconceivable to think about what so many living beings had endured in those cavitys. And these tortured souls now also included humans. Among them his father.
Could he trust this alien being? Was it telling the truth? At least what it was saying made sense. It seemed logical. That’s why his father had burned when he left the cavity only to be resurrected. It wasn’t really the body of Frank Austin, but an artificially created substitute body, a copy of the original. His father’s real body must be in a cryogenic pod somewhere on the ship. Practically immortal—exposed to new, unspeakable torments every day. No wonder the people believed they were in hell. But how had they gotten onto the ship in the first place?
“We came across humans in the cavity,” Jeff said. “From worlds destroyed by rebel bombers. How can that be?”