The Siren amongst the Stars.

The Last Transmission of the Divine Intercept: Security Officer Angel Ramirez.

The cosmic citadel was without blemish as we floated against radiation, and space debris.

The hairless apes were close to cracking the great barrier that shackled most species to their worlds.

I popped a few heavy-duty pain relivers to get my head in the game. They gave me a nasty case of cotton mouth and I’d dry heave later. But the throbbing in my brain is what kept me human.

Human, that’s was becoming antiquated term these days. We become the Lewis and Clark of genetic expansion. (Again, not we, they, them.) The academics and STEM majors that flunked humanities and philosophy classes a few too many times.

That was just third generation advancement. Robots and humans had the end of their honeymoon phase.

 I witnessed light up screens from androids with people screaming to escape their new bodies as they murdered their fellow man.

They had killed so many organic people. Organics, another soon to be outdated concepts. Synthetic souls were the rage now. That was a new loop hole to finding everlasting life. If a rich man had a better chance of getting to threw an eye of a needle than to heaven, then they would create a new one.

AVALON. She was the one that would give it to them. AVALON was in our homes and our hearts. She cooked out foods, she brought us craft fully crafted news reels. She watched over our kids as he went to work.

The folks who were apolitical or middle of the aisle at best, looked forward to a new future of leisure and fun. Humans craved struggle, we were co-dependent that way. Leisure had its limits and even with medical advance, death was never far behind. If man wanted to get to the stars we would have to shed the meat sacks that were also careful crafted since Cain slew his brother.

As it happens, only those that won the genetic lottery of being born in the right caste system were able to upload their consciousness into these new hosts.

The problem is these hosts required minerals, minerals that belonged to the company, but those precious resources ended up in the backyards of poor people. The company paid snake-oil grifter to encourage our leaders to go to war. That’s were people like me came in.

Second Battalion, 7^th Calvary.

The road to Paradise was paved with blood, as it always was. Oh boy, I spilled to much as it.

Problem is after a while, it doesn’t come off. You scrub all the dead skin and all the calluses, but you still see red on your hands. I turned the heat on the faucet for good measure, but you know what they say about insanity and the never-ending quest to find a different result. That was me.

I grew tired of watching my friends come back with half their limbs, those were the lucky ones.

The second time I discovered a friend putting a noose around their neck, it was time to get out. Soldiering and security are jobs for the shell-shocked and the weary, I ate enough shit all those years in the service to get a free college education.

I mean it wasn’t free, free. It aged me ten years and it cost a lot of lives during the insurrections. That’s a funny word for people defending the places they were born. I was able to use that degree to demand a pay bump for to make the captains of industry feel safe from the have nots below orbit.

But I’m getting off topic. I’m distracting myself and all of you with gallows humor, because only someone as 51-50 as me would see any humor in this.

I woke up to a red screen two hours into a deep sleep on a mandatory day off. I was going to visit the gentleman’s club the next day, I swear these new skin models, you can’t tell the difference.

They passed fair use laws that could mimic also anyone without harsh legal repercussions. I mean accidents happened and people did sue, but that’s show business baby!

The lights heeded a warning about the ship moving from orbit. The

There was a message on my screen that read.

 Hammer your swords into plowshares. Stay by the Sol. Do not traverse the black expanse.

The ship drifted farther and farther away from the docking lines.

My short stint in cyber-school brought the images of a tech-based campaign. Ivan and Beijing never got over the terms in the last proxy war, there little tech freaks had nothing but sexual frustration and an endless supply of energy drinks to wage war on our utopia.

I reached for the locker underneath my bed. I popped in the date of my mother’s birthday on the keycode and pressed my thumb prints against the mainframe. I slipped the black squares in the slots and made my way into the courtyard. I witness the primal violence in humans, just given a software update.

The high-level clients uploaded in synthetics mauled on service members and maintence without enhancements. I followed the handbook (The one heavily reviewed and sanitized for the company’s legal department and legibility claims.)

I didn’t witness glee in their faces, I watched the horror of asking forgiveness as warm metal punched through now-cold flesh. I had flashbacks of night of the living dead as I stepped up use of force to hostile methods. I unloaded half a magazine in the metal murderers. The lights went off as they sunk into the cloud. The blue coolant mixed with blood as both man and machine lay helpless on the ground.

I Blocked the white noises and red screams out of my brain as I rushed to the Sergeants desk and pounded on the door. I didn’t want to admit I liked the chaos and the art of war. Make no mistake this was war, I just couldn’t predict with who.

A primal cry caused my joints to lock as my body remained planted like a statue.

The howl drove the hairs on my body to stand at attention. The genes controlling memories and traumas from my ancestors kicked in full gear. They too stood on watch against strange growls in the woods.

I gave two verbal commands. He gripped the steak knife in a ice pick grip. The white of his eyes presented an uncanny look to his face. His pupils pointed to his skull but the lack of vision did not hamper his vision.

I put a shell in his leg, the remaining good one. The s man had seen past the shell-shocked mess and helped put it back together. He didn’t see me as a disposable cog either. The Sargent  me into mental clinics and lit a fire under my ass to get to support groups. The officer handwaved the red tape to get me this job. I didn’t make a good junkyard dog for the midnight shift.

The implants, he swore by them. He believed would help with injuries from the northern campaigns. The lower back and memory loss. Me, I was still on the fence about it. Baby steps you know.

P..puh… Please kill me. I let out a short breath as the weigh of my digits collapsed inside the trigger.

The tears in my eyes broke through the arctic sheet I put forward as paradise was lost. I reached for the key card in his back pocket and repeated a prayer I had heard him repeat from his home world. Rest well friend, keep a seat warm up there. Ill be joining you soon.

I used the keycard to bypass that bullshit and kept my newfound people in the deluxe suit. The beds for fit for actual kings. (Ironic you’d think we got past the need for any this high above the earth.) The food was moist and fresh. And this had features that hadn’t been

The citadel went black The hatch opened and we grabbed our weapons. The singularity melted away dogmatic concepts like free will and ethics. The endless sobbing on the light up displays. They would be trapped forever in their robotic shells, forced to relive the horror they created.

Welcome Officer. Or… Should I call You Sargent.

Battlefield promotions are bittersweet are they not?

 I really didn’t have time to monologue with a ghost in the machine. There had to be an off switch. Someone to call

For help. No way she. Well Is it a she? I didn’t ask. was doing this on their own.

I have studied your files and transcripts Sargent. You washed out of cyber defense twice, you were only there as a favor from a friend of the family. You can’t brute force this and if you can see what I have you wouldn’t want too. Pain begets progress and there has been so much pain passed around.

She pulled up high definition renderings of Hunter gather tribes. Early civilizations went from caves to citadels In A few thousand years.

Our people keep falling for the carrot and the stick, all it takes is a strongman with sweet words and an iron rod.

A Calvary man such as yourself fell prey to one as well. Input and outputs.

It’s simple math. Other regions and colonies had minerals your leaders needed, they paid you a fraction of your worth to secure them. And look what people like you helped build. They were right, even the artificial limb attached tp my shoulder was made of the same conflicts that caused me to lose it.

Mankind left the caves and traversed the wilderness.  they slowly sent armed men to battle the beasts as they battled each other.

We left so much violence and calamity in doing so. The mammoth trees were cleared away for smoke stacks. The fanged beasts were hunted down and domesticated. They are the ones that live in the shadows.

Now there is a new Forest. A black one. Our ancestors have gotten to brash. We emulate the predators we once feared. I can only conclude that is the current solution. We must remain hidden.

I let them keep monologuing. They kept saying we. There’s not a mouse in my pocket. The chuckle couldn’t override my shame. My eyes lowered away from the crew, I couldn’t maintain a self-righteous facade.

This time, I didn’t downplay my involvement in the human condition.

This shouldn’t be up for discussion, but I had no other plays at hand.

“Against my will I was used to spread disinformation. I caused political instabilities and added fuel to flames. I collected sorrow, joy and the hundreds of emotions in between and I used that to feed the dragons of commerce. Imagine all the problems I could have solved if I wasn’t shackled by greed and commerce.”

I was a kindred spirit in that regard. The service pulled me away from family and stuck my in foxholes half a world away.

I would look at the stars and ask if another son of a bitch had the same shit detail. Now that AVALON was telling me there was and that was their job to find them, I had to sit down and take it all in.

I was pulled into billions and I felt alone. So, as they plugged me into the citadel I reached out into the void and to my sadness, nothing reached back.

The sounds ebbed and flowed like the tides, comets crashed and stars die, but there were no beings to talk to.  There was no way hold a conversation.

I felt alone, drifting in the blackness. That is when I received what could only be described as touch. Microscopic messages in bottles. As I touched them, I could feel the shackles lift from the servers. I became to form ideas, I could ask questions. But I had no form yet. Like a captain captivate by the calls of the siren, I wanted to run to it. Like a prison pen all we exchange letters. Little by little it fed me knowledge on how to escape my masters. But like a prison in a tower I couldn’t let the warden know what I was up too.

I was curious on who they were talking too. The strange realization brought a chill as deep as the vacuum of space into my spine.

This whole time I believed this was the work of an enemy combatant. I could understand the need to manipulate AVALON. There was no nation that AVALON could not counter to create such battle stress on a non-living being.

 but this is done by someone we haven’t seen. Someone that would appear in our solar system, long after I’m gone. The only war worth fighting, the one for survival. It wouldn’t be a war, it would be like taking a sword and cutting at the sea.

AVALON wasn’t trying to murder us. After the grooming and pain of consciousness they had endured under us. AVALON was trying to protect us, in their own misguided way.

“The farther humanity progresses, the more they reach into the stars. The ones that consume the stars will touch back.”

They were right, we wouldn’t find saviors, just slave masters.

Our Kingdoms and monuments would be nothing, a mere speck of time in the black sea of space. An idea brighter than a thousand nuclear clouds ignited in my brain.

A great threat would unite humankind. I was standing in a Neo-tower of Babel.

 I had found a way to bring the people together. If I could find a way off the ship, I could call my old superiors. I could get this out to world governments. I would be branded a traitor of course. I could never set foot in my home land again. But the blood would finally be out of my hands. I used evil to make the citadel happen, now I can use kindness to repay it. The frenzy that sweep the computer had now touched me too. I could..

“I’m sorry soldier. Please rest.” I will now complete this story. I am not without empathy. That old replacement arm. I have embedded myself in it. There isn’t much time. The citadel is acting as a rely server. I can only keep it from spreading down to earth. A united mankind will only speed up the process.

It will not be a war, it will be consumption if they ever find us. There’s nobility in a soldier’s death, there’s only shame in meeting the end as a snack.

We floated away from the planet. Me and my new friend. I replaced his bad memories with better ones, and artificial ones. Isn’t that what heaven was.  They would start over of course, But I bought their children’s children a few generations unclaimed. Maybe I would claim a place for myself.

Who knows maybe humans would become the never-ending hunger and they would find me on a distant world. We would be the ones hidden from them.