The Spear of God

by A. J. Schalk

Tampa, Florida, Present Day.

Caroline downed the last sip of red wine from her glass and stared at the tiny crystals sparkling in the dregs at the bottom. She frowned; she knew almost nothing about wine but had read somewhere that the tannins can crystalize with years of aging. It must be a perk of drinking a bottle with a two-thousand-dollar price tag, she thought.

She shook her head. Two thousand dollars was a lot of cash for rotten grape juice. What really blew her mind were the thousands of bottles still left in this upscale restaurant’s cellar. Many of those were even more expensive.

Still, she had to admit, it had tasted much better than the stuff she used to drink with Karl.

The memory of his face made her immediately reach for the other dusty bottle sitting on her table. It was from the same pricey vintage, though she really couldn’t give a rat’s ass. As long as it got the job done.

She removed the foil and screwed in the cork puller. The cork released with a soft pop, and she slowly poured the contents into her glass until it filled past overflowing. She watched impassively as the dusky liquid ran across the table, spilled over the edge, and dripped onto the floor with a soft patter.

I guess this kind of stuff had been important to some people.

Now those people are gone, and she retreated to the underground wine cellar when the stifling summer heat and humidity became intolerable. It was also convenient if you wanted to drink yourself into oblivion, a goal she has been pursuing with steely determination recently.

She slammed the empty bottle on the table with a crack. She wasn’t sure why—perhaps just to see what would happen. It sounded hollow in the dining room’s cavernous emptiness. With a sigh, she turned to the cracked window that provided the only reprieve from the tomblike gloom. The street outside was deserted, the storefronts dark, some with missing windows. A few cars, many with shattered windshields, were parked haphazardly in the middle of the street. Debris choked the sidewalks.

She also saw the pods—identical, featureless slate-gray cylinders just about the right size to fit a large adult. They had become as ubiquitous as cars, standing upright in the middle of the streets and on sidewalks in cities, towns, villages, and fields all over the planet.

Sentinels for a doomed world, she thought. Caroline mockingly raised her glass to the nearest one, splashing most of the wine on the table in the process.

“Damnit,” she muttered to herself absentmindedly.

She was considering going back down to the cellar for another bottle, perhaps playing another game of find-the-most-expensive-one, when she heard a crunching noise coming from the restaurant’s entrance. She nervously eyed the heavy broom leaning against the wall. Last night she had used it to chase away two dogs that had gotten into the restaurant’s pantry, attracted by the smell of the rotting food. Suddenly she was worried that they were back for seconds, and she craned her neck to peek over the booth next to hers.

Someone was gingerly trying to step around the broken glass from the front door. The intruder was silhouetted against the bright daylight outside, but Caroline could discern a skirt or a dress. Her heart rate quickened—she had not seen another human for two days. She had even begun to suspect she was the only one left on Earth who had not stepped into a pod yet.

“Sorry—that’s my mess,” Caroline yelled. “I wasn’t expecting company.”

The woman did not reply as she made her way to Caroline’s table, navigating overturned chairs and empty bottles. When she emerged from the gloom, Caroline saw that she was wearing a plain white tank top, black knee-length skirt, and sandals. Her arms and legs were sinewy with muscle, her frame short and lean. Raven-black hair ran down her back in a neat braid. Caroline felt like her heart had just stopped.

It can’t be her, she thought.

The woman came up to Caroline’s table and stopped a few feet away, her head cocked to the side, a gentle smile on her face. Caroline stared into her dark eyes. She tried to imagine what was happening behind them and failed utterly.

“May I join you?” the woman asked politely, breaking the spell. Caroline blinked, nodded and gestured to the bench seat across from her with a trembling hand.

“Careful,” Caroline suddenly said as the woman slid onto the bench. “I think I spilled some wine there.”

The woman smiled at her.

“It’s dry enough,” she said.

They sat in silence. The woman’s dark eyes probed Caroline’s, revealing nothing in return.

“Let me guess. You go by Linda, but your real name’s Liu?” Caroline finally asked.

“You can call me whatever you’d like,” the woman replied calmly. “Though one of those two names would seem more appropriate, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I’ve always preferred Liu.”

“Liu, then.”

Caroline had been sliding along her new but already well-worn path into drunkenness only a minute ago. Now she felt stone-cold sober. She studied the woman’s face. It had a small mole between her upper lip and nose, just like Liu’s had. Her eyes glittered with the same spark. It was a face Caroline still knew well; a face utterly unchanged by time since she last saw it more than a decade ago.

Caroline leaned over the table, clasping her hands together to keep them from shaking.

“But you’re not really Liu—or Linda—are you?” she said.

“Correct.”

“Then what the hell are you?”

The woman blinked.

“I’m a conscious being, just like you,” she replied. “I’ve lived my entire life—thousands of years—in the computing Substrate of the Ship. Before we arrived at Earth, I volunteered to be an Agent to help the more . . . reluctant members of your species integrate into the Substrate.”

“An Agent? Then why do you look like Liu?”

“Liu entered a pod and integrated four days ago. All her memories, her consciousness, are in the Substrate now. That’s how we found out about your connection with her. We thought my appearance and knowledge of Liu would make it easier for us to connect—and help you integrate.”

Caroline felt her eyes burn in rage—or despair—she couldn’t tell which. Probably both. She turned her head and focused on the completely smooth surface of the nearest pod outside the window.

“I’m sorry about your husband and daughter,” the Agent said, her tone sorrowful. “You know we couldn’t get here in time to save them.” Caroline turned her gaze back to the woman, her anger growing.

“But you sure as hell are responsible. It’s your stupid fucking war,” she spat bitterly. She thought about the dust-grain-sized piece of tortured space-time traveling at the speed of light, impacting Earth just north of Tampa. “Rogue trans-Planckian ordinance” was the term she had heard from the Ship’s broadcasts. It sounded ridiculously inadequate for something that had vaporized half a city and almost a million people in an instant, a piece of shrapnel from a war that has raged since the first dinosaurs emerged on Earth. A piece of shrapnel that had killed her husband and daughter in their home while Caroline was still teaching at her school, just outside the blast zone.

“The origin of that particular weapon is lost in time,” the Agent said. “But yes, it may have been ours.” She leaned over and laid her hand over Caroline’s. Caroline had to resist the urge to jump up and smash the woman’s face into the table. “You know that if you stay here you will die. What happened to your family is just the beginning. So far that was the only one that hit Earth. More—many more—like it is on the way and we can’t stop it. In only a few days the Earth will be ash and cinders. If you integrate—”

“My life’s already ash and fucking cinders!” Caroline screamed at the Agent, yanking her hands from her grip. “Give me one fucking reason to get into your goddamn pod!”

The Agent folded her hands and there was a glint in her eyes.

“Because it’s what Liu wants,” she said.

* * *

Baltimore, Fifteen Years Earlier.

Baltimore had been in the middle of a gorgeous Indian summer. The trees were explosions of red, yellow, and orange, the air warm and rich with the smell of leaves and earth. Caroline opened the door and emerged from her classroom. She took a deep breath, savoring the warm sun on her face. She decided right then to eat her lunch outside.

She grabbed her tote and gave a small sigh when she felt how heavy it was. Along with her turkey sandwich and iced tea, her tote was stuffed with ungraded student worksheets. It would have to be a working lunch, she thought glumly.

She was sitting at a picnic table next to the athletic field, poring over a tenth grader’s worksheet on magnetism, amazed at the creativity this student showed at misunderstanding basic instructions, when she heard a polite female voice.

“May I join you?”

Caroline looked up, her mouth full of the last bite of her sandwich. She recognized the woman as a new substitute teacher, though she couldn’t remember her name. Caroline was anxious to get her grading done, but the sparkle in the woman’s dark eyes and warm smile made her hesitate.

“Sure,” Caroline replied after a brief pause. The woman nodded gratefully and slid gracefully onto the bench across from her. She methodically and neatly deployed her bowl of noodles, can of diet soda, two bananas, and chopsticks from a small cooler. Her features were Asian, her long raven-black hair done in a neat braid. Caroline guessed that she was about ten years older than her, probably midthirties. The woman introduced herself as Linda, and Caroline admired the lean definition of the muscles in her forearm when they shook hands.

“You’re the sub for Jenny, right?” Caroline asked before draining the last sip from her iced tea can.

“Yes, until she comes back in two weeks.”

They gossiped about their colleagues and shared funny stories about students. Caroline told her about a student whose parents had written her a long letter, complete with extensive supporting documentation, to request an excused absence from an exam—because the student had been arrested for streaking at a mall and was in jail at the time. She gave the student an F anyway, and Linda laughed so hard that soda almost came out her nose when Caroline recited the indignant voicemail the parents had left her when they saw the report card.

“I should get back to class,” Liu said, still giggling, and started gathering her lunch items. Caroline glanced at her watch.

“Crap,” she muttered. “I need to get back too.” She would have to finish her grading tonight. She could do it in front of the television, where Karl would likely be buried in his laptop anyway. After two years of marriage, their life already had a well-worn rhythm of work and more work.

“Where’re you from?” Caroline asked as she was stuffing the worksheets back into her tote.

“Seattle,” Linda said. A brief pause and Caroline saw a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes. “This is my last substitute gig here. I’ll be heading back in two weeks.”

Caroline felt a surprising pang of sadness.

“Bummer,” she said. “I enjoyed our chat.” She hesitated, feeling oddly nervous. “Would you like to keep meeting for lunch until then?” she said a little too fast. Her heart fluttered when she saw Linda’s face light up.

“That’d be great,” she said.

* * *

Lunch quickly became Caroline’s favorite part of the day. The warm weather was persistent, and they continued meeting at the picnic table. Caroline learned that Linda’s real name was Liu and insisted on calling her that. She tried to get to the table a little early so that she could steal glances at Liu as she walked to the table. Caroline was mesmerized by her athletic grace and lean frame. She was not surprised when Liu told her she ran forty miles a week.

By Thursday Caroline was picking her walking routes through campus so that she would pass Liu’s classroom, hoping to catch a glimpse of her through the window. One night, when she was making love to Karl, she tried to picture Liu’s muscular body next to her, that Karl’s warm breath against her neck and fingers gently working between her legs belonged to Liu.

* * *

Liu and Caroline spent their final lunch together watching the children from the neighboring elementary school play on the field. Caroline stole surreptitious glances at Liu each time she would laugh at the kids’ antics. Once she caught Liu looking back at her. Liu held her gaze silently and only looked away after a moment, a slight smile curving her mouth.

Afterwards, they walked back to the school building in silence. A part of Caroline, of which she was not particularly proud, hoped that Liu was dreading saying goodbye as much as she was.

Liu suddenly stopped and turned to her. “Do you have any plans this weekend?” she asked. Caroline’s heart skipped a beat. “My stuff’s mostly packed,” Liu continued, “but it would be great if you could help me empty the fridge. I’m a good cook, I promise. Especially if you like spicy food.”

Caroline thought quickly about Karl’s schedule, which he kept taped to their fridge door. He was on shift Saturday night at the hospital.

“Saturday, 6:00 p.m.?” Caroline said.

* * *

Saturday evening at 6:00 p.m. sharp Caroline was sitting in her car, clutching a small box wrapped in flowery paper to her chest. She stared at the front door of Liu’s apartment. It looked innocuous, just like the doors next to it, but it was taunting her, urging the knot in her belly to tighten. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and grabbed the car door handle.

She rang the doorbell and listened to the soft footsteps on the other side approach. Beads of perspiration formed on her nose that she wiped away with the back of her hand. The weather forecast had called for this to be the last night of the Indian summer. The heat definitely felt summerlike.

When Liu opened the door, she was dressed in a plain white tank top and black knee-length skirt, her long hair braided down her back. The smile on Liu’s face melted the knot in Caroline’s belly into something warm and comforting.

“Come in, come in,” she said, beckoning her inside. Caroline kicked her sandals off by the door and followed Liu to the kitchen. The apartment was cozy, warm, and smelled of ginger and cooking.

Caroline peeked inside the rooms they passed. Most had a few moving boxes and pieces of furniture stacked orderly along walls, except for one. It only had a neatly made bed with a nightstand. On the nightstand were a fresh arrangement of red roses and three unused candles mounted in holders. The sight made the warm thing in her belly become a knot again. She turned quickly and followed Liu.

In the kitchen, Liu pulled a bottle of wine from an otherwise-empty fridge. She produced a puller from a pocket in her skirt and deftly removed the cork.

“Here,” she said as she gave Caroline the bottle and pointed to two glasses on the counter. “Get started with that while I finish my stew.” Liu turned to the stove to attend to a large pot. Caroline poured two glasses for them and sipped while watching the muscles in Liu’s arms and shoulders flex as she stirred the pot.

Dinner was a rich, fiery stew of scallops and vegetables served on noodles. As they ate, their conversation drifted from Liu’s experiences in Baltimore to Caroline’s childhood in Florida. Caroline did not want to talk about Liu’s departure—or Karl—and Liu didn’t mention either. Dessert was cherry ice cream, which cooled Caroline’s smoldering mouth.

Afterward, she helped clear the table and wash the dishes.

“Can I open my present?” Liu asked as they were toweling their hands dry.

“Please,” Caroline said. They sat at the table again, and Caroline watched anxiously as Liu carefully removed the wrapping paper and opened the little white box. Inside was a small gold heart-shaped pendant attached to a gold chain. Liu held it to the light, her eyes wide.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “And on a teacher’s salary . . .”

Caroline blushed. She still had to think of an excuse for the extravagant purchase to give to Karl for when he saw their credit card statement.

Liu reached across the table and took Caroline’s hand in her own.

“Thank you so much,” she said softly, her dark eyes glimmering. “It’s lovely.”

Her thumb started gently circling the back of Caroline’s hand. Caroline’s skin suddenly felt very hot.

“Can I ask you a question?” Liu asked, cocking her head.

“You may,” Caroline replied. She took a full sip of wine, emptying the glass, trying to keep her hand steady. The thumb moving across her other hand burnt like a small ember.

“What do you think of me?”

Caroline inhaled slowly, trying to calm her racing heart.

“I think you’re amazing,” she replied, her face burning. “You laugh at my jokes.” Liu smiled, her dimples two dark spots on her face. “And I think your body is a work of art,” she blurted out.

Liu’s smile grew by a fraction, and she put her own glass on the table, but did not let go of Caroline’s hand. She stood, pulled Caroline up next to her, and drew herself close. Liu was a few inches shorter than Caroline, and her forehead brushed against Caroline’s lips. She kissed her there, the smell of shampoo and warm ginger filling her nose.

Liu rolled her head back and Caroline placed her mouth against hers, kissing her deeply. Caroline ran her hand nervously up Liu’s waist and found her breast. She had never touched another woman’s breast before, and Liu’s was smaller and firmer than her own. Liu moaned softly when Caroline circled her thumb across the front.

Then her thumb froze.

Her hand slowly slid to the center of Liu’s chest and gently pushed her away.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I really wanted this. I thought I could do it—but I just can’t.”

She murmured goodbye, grabbed her purse, and ran to the front door. Liu was yelling something behind her as she ran to her car, but Caroline couldn’t discern the words.

Later, when she was crying in her car parked on the side of the road, trying to push the image of Liu’s disappointed and hurt expression from her mind, the last words Liu had yelled at her came back.

I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!

Caroline let out another sob. She wished it had been her conscience getting the better of her that made her leave. Or that visions of Karl had flooded her mind and made her reconsider. It wasn’t.

She had been terrified.

She never saw or heard from Liu again.

* * *

Tampa, Florida, Present Day.

Caroline sat cross-legged on the window table, her sweaty skin shiny in the shaft of moonlight from the open window. Even though they were miles away, the iodine and rotting cabbage smell of the tidal flats was still discernible. Most people didn’t like it, but Caroline found it oddly comforting. It was the smell of home.

The Ship’s orbit had brought it over Florida, and Caroline watched as it slowly floated across the sky. It glowed dull red, reflecting light from the predawn sun that was still below the horizon. It looked like the spear of an angry god, she thought.

It had appeared the day after the rogue weapon killed her family. A bright source of hard X-rays was spotted by telescopes, just outside the orbit of Mars, moving at a speed only a fraction below that of light. As it approached, it decelerated rapidly in a plume so bright that for a few hours there were two suns in the sky. When the plume winked out a few hundred miles from Earth, it left behind the Ship. News websites and television stations were flooded with grainy telescope images of a massive, ash-gray and featureless needle, twenty miles in length and a thousand feet across. Within minutes of arriving, it dispersed millions of the pods, scattering them across the planet. Every conceivable form of communication—television, social media, cell phones, email, radio—was saturated with the same message from the Ship. It spoke of an ancient war that had found its way to Earth and the imminent destruction of the solar system. The message from the Ship was simple: get in a pod and be integrated into the Ship’s civilization—or stay and die. Caroline had decided to stay and die, preferably while too drunk to know when she was dead.

There was a soft rustle behind her. She turned to see Liu standing there, her head cocked, a mysterious smile on her lips. Behind her, their clothes were scattered across the floor of the restaurant’s banquet room.

She really is a work of art, Caroline thought and smiled. She reached out and took Liu’s hands in hers, holding them to her lips, smelling herself on Liu’s fingers. Even if she were an alien—an Agent—and not the real Liu, Caroline had decided last night to call her Liu anyway. It did seem appropriate.

“Thought you were asleep,” Caroline said and immediately snickered at her own naivety. “You don’t sleep, do you?”

“Not really. I was watching you, though.”

“Why?” Caroline asked into her fingers. Liu frowned. “Why’re you doing this for me? You’ve lived thousands of lifetimes on that Ship. Seen things that are beyond my imagination. You’re not even human, for Christ’s sake.”

Liu’s eyes were dark wells glittering with moonlight. “You’re right, I’m not human,” she said. “I was born in the Substrate, crafted by another mind much more advanced than me. My type of mind happens to be similar to a human’s, though. Different in ways—but similar enough.” She cupped her hands on the sides of Caroline’s face and leaned over, her face inches away from Caroline’s. “Please—come to the Ship. Let me help you, be your guide—your companion.”

“I still don’t understand. Do you even like me?” Caroline asked and gave a nervous chuckle.

“I’ve already encountered many humans in the Substrate and gotten to know your species,” Liu replied. “Some I’ve liked. Some I didn’t. I do like you in my . . . alien way.” Even in the gloom, Caroline could see her smile warmly. “And I’m not the only one . . .”

Liu turned and squatted next to her crumpled skirt on the floor. From a pocket she produced a necklace and held it up in the shaft of moonlight for Caroline to see. It was a gold chain with a small gold heart-shaped pendant dangling at the end.

“She still thinks about you,” Liu said. “She couldn’t take the pendant with her in the pod, even though she wanted to, but she told me where to find it.” Caroline felt a lump in her throat and, for the first time, heard a hint of doubt in Liu’s voice. “She integrated only four days ago but has already lived many human lifetimes in the Substrate’s accelerated time. Her mind’s grown too different for you to recognize. But she still treasures her memories of you. That’s why she shared them with me—and why she asked me to come here.”

“She asked you?”

“Yes.”

Caroline wondered what would have happened if Liu hadn’t asked. She decided she’d rather not know.

“How many beings are on that Ship? In the Substrate?” she asked instead.

“That’s a complicated question—let’s just say many trillions from tens of thousands of different species and millions of types of manufactured consciousnesses like mine. Some are so exotic that I can’t even communicate with them. Others are far more advanced—like you would seem to bacteria.” Liu’s face turned solemn. “The grief for your family is part of you now, as is the emptiness you feel. If you decide to come to the Ship, you’ll take it with you. I could help—take it away if you want—but it would also take away part of who you are now.”

“And if I stay here?” Caroline asked. She saw Liu’s jaw set briefly before she spoke.

“A long time ago, we were too late to save a system. I had to watch as life, cities, mountains, oceans were all annihilated into dust and gas. The only planet with life on it cracked open and spilled its molten core into space, leaving tendrils of glowing rock cooling and fading into the darkness between the stars.” Liu’s expression was stoic, but her lip trembled. “It was terrible—but I’ll still stay with you here, to the end, if that’s what you want.”

Caroline reached over and turned Liu’s face to hers. Her eyes had the sparkle she remembered from fifteen years ago.

“Tell me more about the Ship,” Caroline said.

* * *

The Ship, Computing Substrate, Node Section 531d-6c69-0958-930f-09c0-386d-f33e.

Caroline sat on the pebbly beach, watching the blood-orange sun set across the ocean. The spray from the waves tasted salty on her tongue, and a rich scent of kelp and sea life permeated the air. Her stomach rumbled, and she wondered what Liu was going to cook for dinner tonight. The pantry in the cozy beach bungalow behind her was infinite—literally infinite.

Liu’s head appeared from the water between two waves. It was followed by her shoulders and torso. She was wearing a simple white one-piece swimsuit, and Caroline thought she was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen—other than her own daughter. The familiar, crushing despair suddenly threatened to overwhelm her.

A large, brilliantly colored towel appeared from nowhere next to Liu and floated there like a magic carpet from a movie. She took it and began drying her hair with overly dramatic vigor. Caroline couldn’t help but laugh at her, in spite of her sadness.

“Why do you dry yourself like that?” she asked. “Why don’t you just make the water disappear?”

Liu pursed her lips. “I don’t know. I like the sensation, I guess,” she cocked her head to the side, “and I get to sit on it,” she said playfully.

She laid the towel next to Caroline, sat, and leaned her head against Caroline’s shoulder. Caroline wrapped her arm around her, resting her hand on Liu’s knobby shoulder. Together, they watched the setting sun and small, bright-red crabs scurry between the pebbles. Caroline’s surging despair slowly ebbed into a dull ache. Liu had that effect on her, she had noticed. Mentally, Caroline instructed the Substrate to deactivate her hunger sensation.

“You’re still happy with our simulation?” Liu asked, after a few minutes had passed.

“It’s lovely,” Caroline replied. By now they’ve been in it for three weeks in Ship time, which was still only a few seconds on Earth. She has already noticed many changes, like how she could suddenly explain the computational elements of the Substrate and their function; how they were woven from the fabric of spacetime, bending the esoteric rules of quantum gravity at impossibly small scales. Liu had told her this would happen; it was the Ship introducing Itself.

“What’s your real name?” Caroline asked, surprised that she hadn’t done so already.

“A very long string of numbers,” she replied. “But I like Liu better.”

“And you’ve never thought about expanding your mind, letting it evolve, like the original Liu has? I mean—you’ve been here much longer than her.”

Liu was silent for a while. Caroline wondered if she had offended her.

“I have,” she replied, her voice sounding distant. “But I’ve never really felt the need. Maybe I’m just more content than humans.”

“Remind me, how many beings are in the Substrate?” Caroline asked quickly. She could just query the Substrate herself but wanted to change the subject. It made her feel petty, but the thought of Liu changing suddenly frightened her a little.

“Many trillions,” Liu replied. “Including, of course, a few billion recently added humans and other intelligent species from Earth.”

Caroline wondered what kind of simulations had been created for the mammals, octopi, and birds that now lived with her in the Substrate—and if they even knew they were no longer corporeal and if it even mattered to them. Perhaps she and Liu could go visit them someday.

She squeezed Liu’s shoulder. “I’d like to stay here—on this beach—forever. Just the two of us,” she said.

“That would be nice,” Liu replied dreamily.

“But I think I’m ready to meet some of the other passengers on this Ship—if you’d introduce me.”

Liu sat up and turned to her, the joy in her eyes palpable.

“I’d love to,” she said.