Lamb - 1/2

They split from the chattering group, ducking under the perimeter fence to huddle at the base of the temple. He shrugged off his schoolbag and glanced round at her, grinning.

'This is the perfect place for it,' he said.

'What did you say it was called?'

'Phonography.' He rustled to produce a thin metal tube. 'It's kind of like field recordings of natural sounds.'

'We're going to get in trouble.' 

'It's for my music project anyway. They should be happy I'm... trying. Something.'

She stared up at the ancient pods that formed the main body of the temple, and the distant peaks beyond.

'This is called the Ark?' 

'It is,' he nodded, twisting out headphones.

'It must be like a million years old.'

'Something like that.' He clipped a microphone into a little device. 'Sorted. Right. Wedge that tube against the wall and say something. I'll get vibrations, resonance, cool stuff.'

She glared at him.

*

The tapering cylinder cut a silent passage through the inky swath, votive stars pursing meekly around the monolithic, rotating centrifuge. A pinprick orb cut from the black - a distant, dark husk - seemed to dip as if in supplication.

To the rear of the ship, concave slabs bristling with panels preceded further hive-like clumps of cylinders. Around its hulking configuration, layers of dark beyond dark unspooled and spread with pestilential design, rolling in limitless waves until the tubular slip of white glimmered as the last monastic cell within a ocean of oblivion.

*

There was a whirring noise and a dull throb. These rhythms came to K as if thrown across generations, tender probes floundering on electric sparks flitting behind his eyelids.

The lid was grinding open. A bright wash of light and he was rising, choking and blinking gluey eyes as the weight of decades was crushed and condensed into the white coffin, a timeless constant. A gelatinous membrane clung to his shoulder and he tugged at strings of it as dotted images blossomed and rushed back.

Around him a vast pantheon of white coffins opened out, gleaming circular levels spiralling around a central void. A white, fence-like barrier ran around the circumference of his own level, and clambering from his sticky bed, he negotiated his way between the closely-grouped coffins to slump against it.

The shadowy tunnel beneath prompted a nauseous wave, and he stiffened.

'Status.'

His voice, thin and reedy, looped and dissipated throughout metallic chambers. A steady thrum underpinned everything. His footsteps were vibrant wet slaps echoing down the central funnel as he padded over the ledge. 

'Status.'

The door slid open with a sharp intake of breath. K looked back at the chamber, at the endless coffins, and trudged into the corridor.

The light here seemed a violent neon, and he leaned against the pristine white wall. Numerous doorways were indented into the smooth, curved passage, but he looked towards the white ovals glowing near the ceiling at regular intervals. It was as if someone had placed tiny rugby balls high along the length of the aisle.

'Support,' he said, coughing. 'Support, status.'

The white oval above his head flickered and flared into a cool yellow glow. Frowning, K balanced on his toes and stretched up to touch the glowing bulb. He dropped down, shivering in his stringy vest. The bright oval detached and hovered hesitantly before gliding down the side of the wall. Two indistinct shutters opened in the white lining behind it, and a greyish, wraith-like torso of shimmering, metallic quality slid from the gap, adjoining with the ovular head as it descended.

K breathed. The silver-bodied apparition wavered before him, its blank yellow head bobbing.

'Where is everyone else, support?'

The oval face flitted closer and emitted a scratchy, high-pitched screech. K backed away. Ducking down, the little lamp twisted and swam, myriad reflecting mirrors glinting within its frame. It screeched again and K glanced up at the plaque in the space it had vacated.

'Central, decommission C52 support.'

The light in the dancing head flared and died, and the oval drifted to the ground. The sheets of its body crumpled on the floor. K scratched his wrist and sunk down the wall alongside it. His head was throbbing, and something bleak but ungraspable seemed to be burrowing into his mind as it tried to re-adapt.

'C53 support,' he whispered, digging the balls of his palms into his eyes.

The oval to the right of the vacated space above sparked and glided down, crisp light refracting on its amorphous frame. Its bright bulb-face brushed close to his own.

'Support, are the others awake?' 

There was another surge of falsetto static, and K hammered at the wall. He was rising when a tinny voice interspersed a second screech.

'... catastrophic losses passing through the second wormhole. Technical issues. Massive energy depletion and subsequent redirection of resources required to ensure safe passage, and continuation of the - '

The oval dissolved into frenzied screeching again, vibrated frenetically, and settled into a dull glow. K ran shaking hands through his greasy hair, absorbing the garbled dialogue.

'You redirected - you redirected the energy supplies from life support to take us... to pull us through the second wormhole.' 

The oval orb veered close and shrieked in glacial stutters before siphoning off towards the wall. K gazed down the length of the corridor. The bassy drone nipped at his skull. The support's cape-like body reflected the wash of the ship's cream light as it danced.

Around them light rushed from stars and galaxies, reflected from planets and nebula and distant, unfathomable bodies, straining and suffering to puncture the final black sea.

'Status,' he muttered, nodding in shock.

'Lamb 15. Seventy-two years, eight months and fifteen days in...'

The orb frazzled out in a fit of feedback, clattering to the floor.

*

Stooping, K heaved the pasty form from the white box and laid it on the steel floor. Egg-white sclera glared back at him, blue lips glued together under a membranous lattice. He looked back at the bodies slumped by the previous life-support machines, and up and down, filling the circular levels, at the fleet of white coffins. With every inanimate form the simmering horror spiked.

Almost seventy-three years to be wedged alone in a lacuna beyond wormholes. The last kernel of a wretched, suicidal civilisation forgotten for the past and for all future time, a lie to each other, an apocryphal tale unfinished and suspended in endless dark.

'There are none,' intoned the white oval by his side. Its body slid with elastic movement, curving an arm like liquid tinfoil round his back. 

'That's not possible.'

K rose and wiped a milky blotch from his arm. 'There's - there's three thousand people here.'

'There are not.' 

K swiped the ghostly arm away and padded to the next box. His eyes were dewy as he parted the lid.

'How the fuck was this... how was it justifiable, as a decision?'

The orb glowed dully and skimmed towards the ledge. Its frame tapered and spread like a glittering cloak, trailing iridescent threads as it swam across the void between levels.

'The embryo ark is believed to have located the destination - the haven - through the second wormhole. This was the only route. It was always the only route. We mourn these losses. But even with total loss, there would still be the possibility of finding the ark. Of colonisation. Of redemption.'
 
K pulled himself up and trailed over to the ledge. The steel banister was cold as he gripped it. He looked down at the white dot arcing in the circular black tunnel, a distant dancing light.

'The ark left three hundred years ago,' he whispered. He felt enormously tired.

Shuttling up through the gloom and rows of coffins, the orb dangled in front of him.

'To find us a new home,' it said. 'We could not have predicted a second wormhole. We will find it. We are the Lamb of God.'

'I don't believe in that stuff,' mumbled K. The small oval paused, flared and dived into the bottomless gloom, its leafy figure billowing behind it.

*

https://www.abctales.com/story/stephen-thom/lamb-22