We Leapt Into the Sky

Chapter 37

Kendra stared into the computer screen in the research station, her fingers tapping on the wooden desk. The camera feed reflected her dirty hair, and she swept away the dust and smoothed out the tangles. She forced a smile, but it only deepened the circles under her eyes. Her composure failing, she shrank back. Her eyes prickled, and the liquid that slid down her cheeks was oily, like the fuel she drank to keep her body moving.

She wiped it away. Kendra clenched her hands against the desk and slowly let go. She began the recording.

"This may be the last message I leave here. Whatever the machines did to preserve me appears irreversible, and even if I could escape this place as I am, the fuel that sustains me is linked to its source."

She rubbed a bit of sand from her chin. "I have a theory. The caretakers and their curator display attributes of both organic minds and artificial intelligence. Their fuel keeps organic tissue alive at least temporarily. The process may involve a signal or transmission that enables the organic matter in the fuel to rearrange itself to produce the cellular components required for repair. However, the process is not fully compatible with my physiology. It changed my body. Regardless, I am glad for the additional time the Asteracean machines gave me."

She leaned closer to the screen. "I have learned that Aster's ship holds a technology capable of translating my consciousness to an incorporeal form. My body would be gone, but my mind will remain, and if all goes well, I will leave this planet."

Kendra let out a huff and shook her head. "There's no returning my body to what it was before. I simply have to wrap my head around taking the leap into an unfamiliar form of existence. Even with that uncertainty, I wish to survive beyond my present circumstances. As for my colleagues, Antony, Seph, and Bria, I am grateful to have gone on this expedition with you." She paused, contemplating the impersonal gaze of the camera. "No matter the outcome."

She ended the recording and exhaled sharply, staring up at the ceiling. It would work; she would leave this planet and find them. She'd find Antony and show him she still lived. A pang of frustration hit her, sending an anxious thrum through her legs. She turned off the computer and headed for the roof of the research station.

Stars dotted the sky like the innumerable specks of sparkling sand below. She watched over the expanse of white desert and gray plateaus. The moons hung low, and the horizon faded to a pinkish haze. Small cracks marked her skin like the distant cliffs. Wherever she went, the grit from the desert and dust from her crumbling skin covered her.

She raised her hand to the sky and addressed the empty air. "My body is all I have known, and yet, I am more than my body. I am my potential for change, for movement, for self direction. I am a scientist, a scholar. I've spent my life driven to reach past the edges of knowledge into the unknown. So I will go into the unknown again."

She rested there until the horizon burned red. In the distance, a shape appeared, a shadow crossing the sand and sending dust through the air. The flying sand glinted like snow in the fading sunlight.

Aster approached the research station, the edges of his form billowing like dark fabric in water. His body coalesced as he stepped neatly onto the roof, his heels clicking against the metal.

"I thought I might find you here," he said.

"I wanted to see the sunset," Kendra said. "It will be the last one I watch with these eyes."

His expression shifted, eyebrows twitching upward and worry tugging at his mouth. "Then you have made up your mind."

"Yes. I'm still apprehensive. Afraid. But I will use the ship's technology tomorrow."