#dysonia AU

[scattered-irises]

Part V: Helix of Memories

Another prequel to the Dysonia AU.

More references to the Illusory Paradise...annnnnndd it's all Vocaloid characters. Whoops. Ah, well, you get a small paragraph on Christopher.

Rating: General

Word Count: 1914

Characters: Luka, Miku, Rin

Relationships: Background Luka/Gackpo

Warnings: Talks about human cloning

“Clones…? Count me out of it,” scoffs Rin. 

Luka looks at her sister in surprise. 

“I thought you, out of everyone else, would have been most excited about this proposal,” she remarks. 

Rin puts her hands on her hips. 

“On the contrary, if you actually thought about it,” she mutters. 

She gives Luka a sharp glare. 

“Human cloning is one of the things I would never support as a geneticist.”

“Why?” asks Miku, popping up from their sofa. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a way to remember someone like that?”

Rin purses her lips and shakes her head. 

“There’s too many environmental factors to ensure a perfect clone. Plus, they won’t even have the original’s memories, so there’s no point,” she adds. 

“What if that was the only way for you to see them again?” ventures Luka. 

Her younger sister stares at the floor while Miku makes a humming sound. Rin’s eyebrows slowly furrow, a frown appearing on her lips. 

“Don’t tell me you’re seriously considering that man’s proposal,” begins Rin. 

A long silence fills the room. Luka feels Miku’s judgemental gaze on her, hot as coals. Many years ago, Rin had worked under Dr. Realist’s supervision alongside Luka. After a long argument on the ethics of experimenting on extracted human brains, Rin had left the lab in a furious storm. Even now, her name tag continues to stare at her from the breakroom’s fridge. 

“It’s impossible!” continues Rin. She takes off her red-rimmed glasses and looks directly at Luka. “They’ll send you off to who-knows-where! Your mind wouldn’t be able to last…!” 

“I agree,” adds Miku. “Being in space for that long…It would be far too isolating.” 

Luka wets her lips and looks at her sisters. Rin had just returned home from work, evidenced by her irritability. Her lab coat hangs from one arm, the bow on her head crooked. Miku meanwhile, seemed to reflect Rin’s inner worries. 

“I…it’s still a few years off,” begins Luka. “That’s why I wanted to ask now, if you were willing to donate some of your DNA samples…”

Making a sound of disgust, Rin turns away from Luka and begins to walk upstairs. 

“Count me out of it,” she snarls. “I’ll have nothing to do with that man.”

In the silence that follows, Luka slowly turns to Miku, who holds her with a stony gaze. 

“You won’t be able to change her mind, you know,” says Miku. 

Luka lets out a sigh and nods. 

“I know.” 

Turning back to her computer, Miku continues typing up song lyrics. For a moment, Luka listens to the pitter pattering of her sister’s keyboard. Out of all of them, only Miku had pursued the arts. It never ceased to amaze Luka how easily lyrics flowed from Miku’s mind. And her voice…! Bright, warm and sweet, just like an angel’s. Their entire family was all good at singing, but Miku had long proven that she was the best. 

It seemed like everyone in her family had their own talents and their own destinies. Their oldest sister Meiko was a skilled manager, boosting Miku’s popularity to the top. Their older brother Kaito was a savvy businessman. Rin was one of the best geneticists in the city. Her twin, Len, was a renowned journalist. And Luka…her destiny was to the stars, far far away from everyone she knew and loved. 

Why did it have to be her?

“That Dr. Realist…How much do you trust him?” Miku asks suddenly. 

Taken aback, Luka runs her eyes across her sister’s screen. 

I gaze up at the stars in the transparent sky

I'm unable to fly, all I can do is cry

I've been wounded up alone, and whenever I feel lonely

"You came here to help me..."

The lyrics are oddly chilling, causing Luka to take a step back. 

Dr. Realist…She had been with him from the very beginning. They had their disagreements, but where it truly mattered, they were in lockstep. His dream was also her dream. In spite of his mercurial nature and carelessly dispensed insults about the human race, they shared a deep desire to save mankind. 

“I trust him with my entire being,” says Luka. “I know he doesn’t seem so, but he’s a true genius. He’ll be the one to save us all.”

Miku makes another humming sound. A pang twists Luka’s heart. On the distant STELLA colony, would there be anyone who would hum the same way Miku did? Surrounded by nothing but stars and the blackness of space, would there be anything remotely familiar? 

“I’m willing to give you the needed samples, but you must promise me something,” proposes Miku. 

“Yes?” 

Miku turns back, green eyes sparkling with amusement. 

“My clones are only allowed off of earth, alright? I don’t want to have to deal with an imposter!” she teases. 

Luka gives her sister an easy grin. 

“Of course. I’ll keep all your samples close to me at all times.”

Miku beams. 

“Good! Gumi’s songs about running into her clones always made me uneasy…”

Luka laughs at the mention of their neighbor. 

“I’ll be sure to ask her if she wants to donate,” she says. 

“You probably won’t have to ask…she’d volunteer!”

The sisters share an easy laugh. Their neighbor was always trying new things, it seemed. One time it was skydiving. Next, it was starting a podcast on kappa hunting. Yes, Luka definitely had to ask if Gumi wanted her clones on STELLA. She would add much-needed joy to the loneliness of space. 

Miku leans her head on the back of the sofa and looks back at Luka. A hint of sadness fills her expression. 

“In all seriousness…please treat my clones well…As you’ve done for me, I want you to watch over them and prevent them from falling into despair. Easy enough, right? ”

A nervous laugh crawls up Luka’s throat. She holds Miku’s gaze.

“That was a given,” says Luka. 

Happiness was so difficult to maintain and keep. 

Miku grins. 

“Does Gackpo know?”

Luka pauses. Her stomach does a small flip upon thinking about her fiancé. She looks down at her garnet ring. He had been so patient, waiting all of those years for her. Would he be able to bear the news that they would never marry, her body shipped off into the depths of space for eternity? 

“...Not yet,” admits Luka. 

Miku quirks an eyebrow. 

“You don’t want a clone of him on your colony?”

Luka looks out the window. A light drizzle has begun, dotting the window with small teardrops. 

“I don’t think so,” says Luka after a few moments. 

“Oh?” 

She thinks of Gackpo’s deep blue eyes and gentle smile. She thinks of running her hands down his chiseled jaw. His soft, purple hair and supple skin. His soothing, deep voice. Her lips tremble. She would have to leave him behind, along with all of her wishes and dreams on earth. 

A happy marriage. A normal family. A normal life. 

Having a clone of him would be a constant reminder of all she had lost. 

“He wouldn’t like the idea,” Luka replies quietly. 

“I see…”

To have a Gackpo that didn’t remember her, who couldn’t touch her, who couldn’t love her, would be merely a cheap copy. 

“What about your coworkers? Like that Christopher?” asks Miku. 

The thought of her coworker makes Luka pause. Whenever she looked at him, she couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pity. He always seemed so sad, his bangs framing his long face with its sunken eyes. Would giving his clone another life on her colony result in a happier Christopher? She doesn’t know what to think of the idea. What would he be if he hadn’t been a scientist? On the colony, would he gaze out at the stars, searching for the dilapidated earth? Would he sing beneath the stars, glad to be rid of the bright moon? 

A small smile fills Luka’s lips when she thinks of Christopher singing. 

“I’ll think about it,” she replies. 

Miku types up a few more lyrics, humming beneath her breath. Luka watches as she writes, the melody filling her with sadness. 

The wish constituting such a desire

was absorbed into the deep, deep, darkness

The words I muttered helplessly

resound aimlessly in this room

It seems like the only one left behind in this world is me

“What’s this song about?” asks Luka. 

Miku doesn’t turn back to look at her, intensely gazing at her screen. 

“The loneliness of a wish granter,” she replies. 

“Interesting…”

“Actually, I think you’d be perfect for the song,” she adds. 

“Me?!”

“Mmhm!” 

Miku turns back, beaming. 

“I’m thinking of naming it The Lone Cell of the Stella Theatre,” she declares. 

“Well…!” 

“Being surrounded by clones of all your loved ones…won’t you be sad that they won’t remember you?” asks Miku.

The faces of Luka’s siblings fill her mind. The countless memories they made of singing and laughing together would have to be enough to carry her into eternity. The things their clones would do without her would be a gentle reminder of those moments. As the STELLA colony’s mind, she would know them, yet they would only see her as a distant god. 

Luka’s throat is dry. As STELLA, she would become an onlooker, forever shut out of the human world. She needed something to remind her that she was once human. 

Luka forces a smile and tilts her head. 

“Only a little bit. It’s enough for me to see all of you smiling,” she replies. 

“You’ll be a benevolent ruler then,” says Miku with a small smile. “How many times do you think you’ll clone me?”

Luka gives a small shrug. 

“Every hundred to two hundred years or so…just enough so that the people there won’t notice I’m cloning my lovely little sister.”

Miku giggles. 

“Maybe in one of my clones’ lives, they’ll be an idol-nun,” she jokes.  

“An idol-nun?!” echoes Luka incredulously.

Her sister shrugs, rolling her shoulders and then humming. 

“That was the first thing that came to mind. She could be a nun by day, idol by night.”

“Life on the colonies isn’t going to be like a manga!” protests Luka. 

“Are you sure? It sounds a lot like one from all you’ve told me,” says Miku, unwrapping a candy bar. 

She breaks it in half and offers it to Luka. Taking the candy, Luka takes a nibble and sighs. To many, Dr. Realist’s proposal sounded like a sci-fi novel or a pipe dream. Only a few were truly willing to believe him. The idea of sending a lone human to control and become a space colony seemed absurd, after all. 

“Laugh at me all you like, but it’ll come true someday,” says Luka resolutely. 

A hint of melancholy fills Miku’s face. She contemplates her candy bar and then bites into it. She chews methodically, with Luka silently counting how many times her sister chews before swallowing. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Swallow. 

Miku looks out the window, where the rain continues to fall. Meiko’s geraniums were starting to bend beneath the intensifying rain. Luka makes a mental note to heat up her sister’s favorite sake before she comes home. Miku was probably thinking the same thing. 

“I know,” sighs Miku after a moment of pondering the rain. “I’ll miss you when you’re gone.”

Placing a hand on Miku’s shoulder, Luka offers her sister a small smile. 

“We still have a few years left. Let’s enjoy them while we can.” 

[scattered-irises]

I. Sea of Stars

Part iii of V/V day! 

New mini series (and when I mean mini, it’s very mini) that I’m debating whether to post on AO3 or not. It’s slightly inspired by CosMo’s Star Girl and the Illusory Paradise series. 

Rating: General

Word Count: 840

Characters: Christopher Arclight, Dyson Sphere

Relationships: N/A

Warnings: Science fiction elements

Summary: The god of a space colony recalls his blurry past.

 “Make a wish to V. He hears all and shall grant your wish.” 

 Such nonsense, thinks the god in his lonely chamber. 

 In this space colony, floating in the middle of a star-studded void, there is little a god can do. Sometimes, it feels as if staring out at the transparent sky and weeping is the extent of this god’s powers. Except instead of tears, the god weeps sparks and shooting stars. 

 This loneliness, is it a punishment? Although he as a god shouldn’t even know the meaning of loneliness, the sensation eats away at him. 

 He is called a god, yet there is so much he can’t do. 

 On occasion, he can make flowers bloom in front of the humans’ small houses. Sometimes, he can even push them through the cracks in the metallic sheets. They are small, sickly things, nothing like the vibrant blooms that had grown back on his home planet. Despite this, the humans love these small wilted gifts. 

 V’s Blessings, they call them.

 In metal cups these colorless flowers are placed. There is no water to sustain them. Within a day, the flowers crumble to dust. 

 After all, no one save for the god has any true memories of flowers on the home planet. 

 If he is feeling particularly generous, the god will bring forth the rains. Like the flowers, the rain on this colony is only a poor imitation of the rain on earth. Even as the god’s memories of the past slowly ebb and fade, he knows that the rain here is pitiful. Instead of coming from the sky, the rain comes from the ground in an interconnected series of tubes. Fueled by a finite, artificial supply, the god must be careful in its dispensation. 

 The earth here is scarce. Not much can grow outside of the laboratories. For the poor children who wish for something sweet, the god can only offer small fruits. There used to be something else that tasted better. The god can’t remember what its name was. But there was someone who was close to the god that had carried it with him every day. 

 It was colorful. And very sweet. So much sweeter than the fruits grown here. 

 The god lets out a sigh. The underground vents in his panels let out steam in response. A surge of electricity courses through his wire veins. 

 The sun sits in the god’s hands, offering up its small rays of warmth. Despite this, the god wishes for a glimpse of the sun beneath a blue sky. Although he had once despised the day, night is all he has now.

 In this unchanging abyss, time stretched on endlessly. It eroded names, faces and the past. He has been here since…since forever, it seems. In the hours where he sleeps, he dreams of a past smeared by the passage of time. The voices are distorted. The faces are nothing more than splashes of paint. There is a voice in his mind that tells him that he was once just like the people on his colony. 

 Full of hopes. Full of dreams. Begging for a god to grant his wish. 

 Now he aimlessly floats in this sea of stars, nursing the small ball of warmth in his metal hands. 

 On this colony of endless sunlight, the only semblance of night he can provide is to turn off his lights. Days here are long. The nights with its silence are even longer. 

 At night, the humans hide from him. Illicit acts are committed. Stolen kisses, ugly wishes and crimes of passion all dance across his panels. The god turns away and closes his eyes. 

 He had committed such crimes on earth. 

 Night’s loneliness is not a punishment for the god. It is his duty to provide his humans respite. 

 With each millionth rotation, he can feel another piece of him slipping away. The pieces closest to the sun are beginning to slightly melt. The furthest edges of his panels are beginning to break away. A darkness eats away at the edges of his mind. Eventually, he would just be all machine and no man. 

 “System rot?” asked a voice from the past. 

 It sounds so familiar. Deep and calculating. The voice felt like it had come from his own chest, but that was impossible. As a god, he has no human parts. His eyes and ears are embedded in the panels. His voice thrums through the colony in the form of creaks and groans of metal. He no longer speaks the language of his humans. 

 “It’s when a ‘god’ completely forgets their humanity. That’s when the colony system is deemed unfit,” explained an unfamiliar voice. 

 “Then what?”

 The response is garbled by radio waves broadcasting the morning call. The god slowly turns on the lights. The humans rise. Some reluctantly. Some excitedly. Some not at all. 

 Today as well they will pray to him. 

 He cannot save them all, but believes that it’s worth a try. 

 Already, the first prayers are beginning. 

[scattered-irises]

Part IV: Heart of Garnet

A prequel to the Dysonia AU. I’ve decided to click and drag characters from Star Girl and the Illusory Paradise and Vocaloid into here whoops

I tried my best to integrate them naturally 

Feel free to hate on this and petition the tumblr council to send me back to deviantart 

Also yeah Illusory Paradise has a character named Dr. Realist and we have a Dr. Faker. Funniest thing ever

Rating: General

Word Count: 2864

Characters: Christopher Arclight, Megurine Luka, Dr. Realist

Relationships: Christopher is infatuated with Luka but she’s already with Gackpo boo hoo

Warnings: Science fiction elements, character death

Summary: Long, long ago, the lone god once gazed out at the cosmos alongside a companion. 

“You're trying something new today,” notes Luka as she passes by Christopher. 

 Heat fills Christopher’s cheeks. He looks down at his coffee, filled with more cream and sugar than usual. Just like hers. 

 Mustering up a smile, Christopher wonders if Luka could see his blush. With how pale he was, he probably looked like a tomato to her. The thought makes his cheeks even hotter. 

 “Er, yes…black wasn’t doing it for me today,” he replies, trying to sound as casual as possible. 

 Luka chuckles, her blue eyes sparkling with laughter. Christopher notices that her favorite headband is askew. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her without it, the trusty hairpiece keeping her long pink hair out of her face. Christopher’s hands twitch, wishing he could stand up and correct it. 

 “I see. Hopefully it’s good!” she says. 

 “Megurine! Arclight! We’re here to save the world, not gossip!” interrupts their supervisor. 

 Luka gives Christopher a lopsided grin. She turns to the figure in the doorway and meets his single, uncovered eye with her sweet smile. 

 “Didn’t you know, Dr. Realist? Having an improved mood in the workplace leads to increased productivity!” notes Luka. 

 Dr. Realist rolls his eyes and crosses his arms. His monocle glints in the white light of the break room. 

 “You can laugh after today’s prototype testing,” he replies testily. “Now, come along. Don’t keep the others waiting.” 

 Exchanging smiles, Christopher picks up his coffee and walks down the laboratory’s halls with Luka. 

 The irony wasn’t lost on him that he had left a Dr. Faker for a Dr. Realist. Both men’s real names had been buried beneath their experiments, their nicknames sounding more real. Unlike Dr. Faker, Dr. Realist was far more whimsical. He enjoyed his coffee with seemingly half a cup of creamer in it and occasionally would break out with laughter at seemingly innocuous things. Once, Christopher even witnessed his new supervisor dancing in the rain. 

 Both men were eccentric in their own ways but shared the same passion towards saving humanity. However, they approached this in drastically different ways. 

 Because of his desire to uplift humanity on Earth, Dr. Faker had become far more popular than Dr. Realist. Determined to remain on Earth, Dr. Faker dedicated his research towards saving what they had left. Although he had often disparaged humans who were less intelligent than him in private, Dr. Faker was careful to maintain his public appearance. His focus on protecting the poor and investing in future generations quickly turned him into a beacon of hope. 

 From the beginning, Dr. Realist had expressed his doubts in saving the rapidly decaying planet. Often ignored, he was followed by only a small group of scientists. Proposing that humanity leave the Earth and build remote space colonies, Dr. Realist was quickly shunned by the scientific community. Despite his decades of research, he was continuously called a dreamer. To spite the community, he published his papers under the name ‘Dr. Realist.’ 

 Due to his history of being ignored, Dr. Realist wasn’t afraid of showing his distaste for humanity. ‘Piglets’ was his preferred term for ‘people.’ 

 Christopher follows Dr. Realist into the prototype room with a bit of satisfaction. 

 He had always followed Dr. Realist’s papers in secret. First as a joke, then as genuine curiosity. He wonders when he began to drift away from Dr. Faker’s papers. Perhaps it was even before he murdered his father. Dr. Faker’s papers were convoluted and nigh-unintelligible at times. Later on, Christopher would come to realize that they were full of promises for the future and optimistic outlooks on current-day situations. Dr. Realist’s papers presented tangible numbers regarding declining plant life and oxygen levels. His predictions about food insecurity and diseases had all eventually been correct. It was his proposals for the future that made him the laughingstock of the scientific community. 

 “Great science proves that exploring truths is justice. Unraveled history proves that justice without a power is unworthy!” cried Dr. Realist in one of the meetings where he was jeered at. 

 He tended to blurt out his catchphrase at random moments, startling his assistants. 

 As he watched crop failure after crop failure, pandemic after pandemic wash over humanity, Christopher began to doubt Dr. Faker’s promises and rewatched Dr. Realist’s maligned speeches with a deeper interest. The entire world couldn’t become Heartland City. 

 Regarding Dr. Faker’s city, his current supervisor despised even the mention of it. 

 “It’s nothing but a vulgar lie that’s bound to unravel someday,” he sneered when Christopher mentioned the divide between him and his family. 

 Now, seeing Dr. Realist’s prototype for the STELLA system, Christopher begins to catch a glimpse of his and Luka’s possible futures. 

 The full body chamber at first appeared no different than the healing pods used in Heartland City’s emergency rooms. It was the numerous wires that made all the difference. 

 “Wish me luck,” whispers Luka, her voice audible only to Christopher. 

 Warmth fills Christopher’s chest. The ends of her pink hair tickles his hand, leaving behind the smell of expensive shampoo. Too soon the smell fades, leaving behind only the cold, sterile smell of the laboratory. 

 Removing her lab coat, Luka hands it off to an assistant and steps into the pod made specifically for her. As she lays down, the wires automatically connect to various parts of her body, aided by her black bodysuit. Christopher watches as the pod closes and the aerated gel rises around Luka’s body. Through the glass, she gives everyone a smile before her eyes flutter shut. 

 Silence. The room remains dark, yet the atmosphere is thick with anticipation. Christopher’s heartbeat skips a beat as Luka’s eyes move beneath her eyelids. A part of him wishes he could hold her hand, her nails always painted a cheerful light blue. 

 She was the first person that had welcomed him to Dr. Realist’s lab. Apparently, she had been drawn to Christopher’s abnormally long hair that was styled similarly to hers. They’ve exchanged beauty tips every once in a while, but their conservations always drift back to mundane talk. 

 Or was it soul searching?

 Luka felt as if she understood the loneliness that Christopher had experienced. The sensation of being surrounded by so many, yet unable to make any meaningful connections anywhere…He could feel it in her rare sighs and gentle voice. Once, when they were leaving on a late night, they had both looked up at the sky and made the same comment. 

 “It’s so hard to see the stars with this damn moon.”

 They had looked at each other in shock and then shared a good laugh. 

 The words have nestled in Christopher’s heart like a treasured pearl. He runs through that moment repeatedly on lonely nights. 

 But he knows it’s impossible—the possibility of him and Luka being romantically involved. Before he had arrived at the lab, Luka was already engaged to a kabuki actor who went by the stage name Gackpo. Even in the experimental pod she kept her engagement ring on. Christopher can’t help but feel a twinge of jealousy every time he sees the silver ring. 

 “He’s so thoughtful! It has my birthstone and flower!” she had said, showing Christopher the ring once he had asked about it. 

 The ring featured a snowdrop with a garnet in the middle. He had looked up which month the garnet belonged to afterwards. January. He hasn’t asked when in January because he wasn’t sure if they were close enough yet. 

 The sound of electrical humming jolts Christopher from his memories. The room’s lights turn on, followed by the computers around them. Excited murmurs fill the room as readings of Luka’s vitals fill the screen. The largest screen then flickers to life. Christopher’s heart soars as WELCOME TO STELLA appears across the screen. 

 Success, whispers a voice in his head as Luka activates the small sprinkler system.  Success. Christopher raises his face towards the miniature rain shower. The beginning of the end. 

 🟔

 It was official. They would be part of the first wave of colonies. Christopher lingers by the side of the breakroom’s door, watching Luka’s back. She was alone in the breakroom, hunched over her coffee. From the smell, he could tell that it was black. She was toying with her engagement ring, the garnet dulled after years of experiments and everyday wear. 

 “Have you told him?” asks Christopher as he approaches Luka. 

 She looks up at Christopher, a tight smile on her lips. 

 “Of course. He was prepared for this. And you?”

 A brief call. Nothing else. He couldn’t bear to return home and witness the lesions on his loved ones’ skins. When he thinks of the barren earth, wilted flowers and sickness that plagued Heartland, it only makes him wish that they were here with him. If only they had jumped ship before the water had reached their necks. Instead, they were stubborn on reviving something that had died ages ago. 

 “Yes. We didn’t have much to say. They knew what I would eventually be doing,” replies Christopher.

 Luka’s gaze returns to her ring. She twists it back and forth, letting out a wistful sigh. 

 “I wanted it to work. Truly. To settle down with him and maybe start a family. But…a part of me always knew that was just a fantasy.”

 Christopher looks at Luka. He takes in her pale skin, sunken eyes and blotchy face. She was so beautiful. He couldn’t explain it, but the loneliness in her expression felt like looking into the night sky at times. Vast. Deep. Although he looked at the stars, he knew that millions of light years away, most of them had already died. Despite that, he loved looking at their long-gone visages. 

 “I was one of Dr. Realist’s first assistants. I have to see this through the end,” she continues, mustering a weak smile. “Up there, they’ll call me Stella. What about you?” 

 “V,” murmurs Christopher, the old nickname strange on his tongue.

 He is no longer the lost and desperate 20-year old that carried that name. At 45, he supposes he’s old enough to know better. 

 “V…,” echoes Luka.

 Christopher sits down beside Luka. His blood roars through his ears. Her shoulders rise and fall with each breath she takes. Throughout the seven years he’s known her, it feels as if she hasn’t aged a bit. 

“I hope our colonies are close,” she murmurs, placing a hand on Christopher’s. “It’d be nice to have someone to watch the stars with for eternity.”

 Christopher fights the burning in his cheeks. He’s come to terms with the fact that they’d never be more than coworkers, whether on Earth or in space. Still, the hand was enough for him to last a lifetime. Maybe even two. 

 “I hope so too,” he says. 

 🟔

 He watches as Luka’s pod is closed for the final time, the glass melting shut with the steel cradle of the case. Luka’s eyes have misted over as her mind slowly connected to her distant colony. In a few hours, her body will be transported towards her eternal resting place. Soon, the memory of their conversations and her smile will be all he’ll have of her.

 He tells himself not to despair. At least their colonies will be close. 

 🟔

 Their conversations have continued. The only change is that they have eternity to talk. Buried deep within their daily calculations, vitals reports and watching over their humans, their conversations are exchanged via 0s and 1s. 

 Even though they are light years away, they still have to mind their distance. Their new hearts were highly reactive to one another, pulsing with endless amounts of energy. And so they take turns, edging their cores away from one another to sneak in a whisper or two. Anything to remind them that they were once flesh and blood instead of circuitry floating in the void of space. 

 They talk about the cyclical nature of things. Of reincarnation and recycling. Seeing the faces of their loved ones reflected in their inhabitants. The resemblance is only skin-deep, of course. Their original memories are no longer there. Still, those reincarnations are comforting to look upon. So is each other’s presence, even though they are slowly being pulled apart by the cosmic fabric of the universe. 

 And so time languidly passes on like this, their conversations unintelligible to everyone but themselves. Memories blur. Images fade. They help restore each other’s fading memories to the best of their abilities.  

 An old memory floats up into Christopher’s mind. He passes it to Luka, who adds to it. 

 “System rot?” Christopher had asked during the Stella colony’s construction.

 Luka looked up at the clear blue sky, as if she could peer lightyears ahead at her new body. 

 “It’s when a ‘god’ completely forgets their humanity. That’s when the colony system is deemed unfit,” she said quietly. 

 “Then what?”

 “A dystopic existence for the humans aboard. Or, the ‘god’ simply collapses,” replied Luka. 

 “It’s all theory though, isn’t it?” asked Christopher.

 Luka shrugged. 

 “It’s my theory. We saw it once out of the ten thousand simulations with the human brains we had on hand.”

 “For something like this, shouldn’t you have conducted more tests?” 

 Luka gave Christopher a small smile. 

 “It’s very hard for Dr. Realist to get his hands on a brain these days.” 

 There was a tank in the back of the lab that stood as a reminder of Dr. Realist’s very first tests. A human brain floated in the darkened liquid, suspended by various wires. He had always wondered who it had belonged to before landing in Dr. Realist’s hands. 

 Overtime, the ‘gods’ learned of each other’s families and attempted to piece together what they looked like once the other’s memory began to fade. 

 Miku? queried Luka.

  Teal hair. Bright eyes. Bubbly. Loves her negi. Little sister, replied Christopher.

 Michael? he asked. 

 Pink, brown hair. Green, ovoid eyes. Gentle. Surrounded by history. Youngest brother, said Luka after a brief delay. 

 On and on their conversations went, seemingly stretching into the abyss of eternity. They would try to communicate with other colonies but would never have as equally interesting exchanges. As the colonies began to pull further and further away from each other, communications grew increasingly sparse until there was nothing but static. Christopher felt them blink out of existence with a small twinge in his heart. However, as long as he had Luka, he was content.

 Until she begins to spout nonsense. In the middle of sentence, a series of garbled 0s and 1s would suddenly interrupt her. She stops moving her core away from Christopher, the pulsating waves of energy almost painful for him to intercept. 

 At first, he thought that the distance between them was becoming too great and that communication was slowly being distorted by other waves. Then the waves from her come in rapid pulses, each one increasingly abnormal. 

 CAN’T REMEMBER, she once screamed to him. 

 The rest of her message was garbled. 

 NAME. VOID. VOID? A sea of zeroes. Nothing but zeroes, like a mouth open in a scream only V could hear. 

 System rot, whispered a voice deep within Christopher. 

 His panels trembled, the closest sensation he had to fear. 

 He keeps her last coherent words to him under lock and key. Firewall after firewall. Layer after layer. Something he has tried to delete from his memory but can’t ever truly remove it from his mind. 

 I CAN’T GIVE ALL OF THEM HAPPINESS. 

 And buried beneath those words are her final screams, the screams of a dying colony and her breaking heart. 

 He knows she’s out there somewhere, a darkened husk of broken metal surrounded by the remains of a once-great star. One day she will be all alone, floating in a void of nothingness, the star still stubbornly clutched in her chest. Then, someday the star will explode, scattering her remains throughout the void. Yet her cries for help from eons ago will continue to travel across the universe, deteriorating just like she was. Far out enough, they will distort into unintelligible static. The static will then continue its lonely journey across the universe, begging for anyone to come and decipher its increasingly garbled sounds. 

 For now, someone on a distant colony can still see Stella’s star, brilliantly shining on despite the husk of the colony that was wrapped around it. 

 Would they still think that the star was beautiful once they discovered that it was held in a corpse’s chest? 

 Would they look at her like how Dysonia’s god had once lovingly stared up at the stars?

 Would they mourn?

 Would they cry?

 Sing little songs about her?

 Search for her real name, which was L—

 V tries not to dwell on Stella too much. 

 After all, it happened millennia ago. 

 Still, on lonely nights, he will run through his memories with her on Earth. The images grow foggier by the century. Despite the blurry faces and distant words exchanged, the memories never fail to spark a bit of warmth in his systems. 

Anything, anything to remind him that he was once human, just like the beings that live and die on his panels. Anything to ward off his loneliness.

[scattered-irises]

Part III: Light of Moons

This was written around the same time as the previous two pieces but I wasn’t motivated to type it up until now 

I just wrote part IV yesterday and it’s a lengthy-ish prequel with more Illusory Paradise things lol

Rating: General

Word Count: 1082

Characters: Mizael, Christopher Arclight, Kaito Tenjo (mentioned)

Relationships: N/A

Warnings: Science fiction elements

Summary: A man who can hear the voice of the lone god makes a request.

  Mizeth has a secret. Something not even his brother Dubhe knows. 

  He can talk to V.

In the churches, the magnificent statues built from gold depict V as a faceless deity. He has a burning white sun for a heart. Instead of clothes, he wears the stars. His head consists of five panels and the Dyson Sphere’s core (which is another sun). Supposedly, the sun near his heart was meant to be more symbolic. Or was it supposed to be the other way around? Regardless, the statues were powerful, distant beings bearing only a brief resemblance to a human. 

Mizeth’s V is a long-limbed man with brilliant silver hair and eyes like the crystal lamps that illuminate his neighborhood. He speaks in a deep and gentle voice. No stars adorn his body, only some loose robes like that of ancient Earth’s philosophers. The only hint that he is a god is the glow of his skin. 

Of course, Mizeth can’t tell anyone this. They would be obligated to report him to the Temple and he would be taken away forever. The threat of being taken away always lines the edges of Mizael’s thoughts at night. 

No one knows what happens once someone enters the Temple. Perhaps they are killed. Perhaps they are exiled to another colony. Perhaps they become the mysterious priests. Mizeth likes his life on the colony as it is. 

Although he is of small import to the rest of Dysonia, he enjoys spending his break hours with his brother gardening. His job at the solar refinery wasn’t too difficult either. The small parties his neighborhood had every star-month were fun to attend, filled with gossip and delicious food. And dancing! How could he forget the small pleasure of dancing in his bedroom?

His thoughts travel back to when he and Dubhe had parents. Before it was their time to be replaced, so that two new lives could have a space on the colony. 

There was a boy his age that was taken away. With pale skin and grayish eyes. They were only 830 rotations before they had been separated, but Mizeth remembered the boy fondly. He remembers his mother telling him that they had been born two days apart. Before the boy’s disappearance, they had often played dragons in the empty streets. Mizeth was always a golden dragon. His neighbor had always been a blue dragon. One day, he hoped that they could have a duel against one another. 

When he was taken away, his parents were quickly reassigned to a new community. 

Looking around, Mizeth makes sure that the yard is empty before sitting down. Certain that his neighbors and Dubhe were gone, Mizeth settles on the lawn. He purses his lips at the sharp pinpricks of plastics jabbing at his skin. Why so many homes were carpeted in this substance, he doesn’t know. 

Mizeth then places his hand on a plate of bare metal uncovered by the gravelly dirt. Once he closes his eyes, he can feel his body begin to drift. The metal pulses beneath him, carrying V’s heartbeat. Mizeth’s body floats towards the heavens and through the stars. 

V is near, he determines. 

Past his and Dubhe’s commune. Through his workplace at the solar refinery. More stars. Past his panel’s temple and through a brief gap between the panels. It’s this moment that he hates the most. The lack of stable ground beneath him makes his stomach twist itself into knots. There was nothing but the wide expanse of space in between the panels. The stars yawned before him, ignorant of his fear of falling through the cosmos.

Then, he’s alighted onto another panel of Dysonia. 

 “What brings you here?” breathes V, not even looking at him. 

Mizeth stops. His throat feels dry, beholding V’s form. He’s rehearsed this conversation various times in his mind, yet when he is finally in the moment, all the time spent practicing has been for naught. 

“I…I’ve come with a wish,” he stammers. 

V flicks his hand, sending a shower across a neighborhood. The sprinklers creak to life, dousing the streets with mist. Mizeth looks on in envy at the watery droplets. His and Dubhe’s community plot was in desperate need of water. 

“Speak and it shall be granted,” responds V. 

 Now or never. 

 “The name of my neighbor who was taken away—what was it? And is he still alive?” asks Mizael, his voice nearly trailing off at the end.

V finally turns around to look at Mizael. A soft smile fills his thin lips. Despite that, Mizael is uneasy. No matter how many times he’s had a stolen conversation with V, the uneasiness remains. 

“Many would ask me for wealth or love. Why wish for this simple piece of knowledge when so few are granted this opportunity?” asks the god. 

Heat fills Mizael’s cheeks. V’s gaze is benevolent, glowing alongside the distant sun. 

“Because…because I’ve always thought about him…ever since that day,” confesses Mizael. “We were so similar. Yet why was only he taken away?” 

 V looks at him with one eye open and one eye closed. His smile remains. A part of Mizeth imagines the skin peeling away, revealing a skeleton of chrome and wires. He must remember that V is no longer human, despite appearing like one. He is a god capable of giving and taking as he pleases,

“The answer is closer than you think,” V breathes before drifting away into the cosmos. 

Mizeth feels his body tugging at his wandering soul. The wind roars through his ears as he flies through Dysonia, finally slamming back into his body with a loud gasp. When he awakens, he hears the rumble of a vehicle approaching. His heart skips a beat. This was not what Dubhe’s streetglider sounded like. He peeks out from between the fences to see a black falcon glide down their street. The blue sigil of the Temple was emblazoned on its hood, the curlicues recognizable even at a distance. 

Mizeth swallows the lump in his throat and prepares to run. He probably won’t get far, but at least he bought himself a bit more time to enjoy his freedom. He leaps over his neighbor’s fence just as the falcon parks in front of his house. 

Running into the streets, he curses under his breath as the lights behind him begin to shutter off. With only the stars and Dysonia’s distant sun as his witness, Mizeth chases after the dying light.

[scattered-irises]

Part II: Cradle of Steel

Spot the Illusory Paradise reference hahaha

Rating: General

Word Count: 659

Characters: Kaito Tenjo, Christopher Arclight

Relationships: N/A

Warnings: Science fiction elements

Summary: At night, a lone priest is left alone with his god.

The temple is silent. Kite waves his fellow priests farewell and begins to prepare the altar for the night. He had been the one to pull the shortest straw. 

 For a moment, he closes his eyes and listens to the sounds of the temple. The receding footsteps of his siblings-in-faith. The humming of the machinery. An ever-present buzz of electricity. His own breathing. 

 In truth, he enjoys the long nights, despite the god’s silence. 

 Kite opens his eyes and adjusts his white coat. The sound of footsteps have vanished, the echoes dissipating into the shadows of the darkening temple. 

 His siblings-in-faith won’t be far though. The temple is their home as well as their prison. What they witness cannot be known to the people. Once their gifts are discovered, the temple becomes their grave.

 Kite turns to the screens listing their god’s vitals. Oxygen levels stable. Heart rate stable. Vitamins and mineral intake all accounted for. Neural activity stable. Kite looks at the slow and steady heartbeat readings of the god and smiles softly to himself. 

 All accounted for. All in balance. 

 He follows the ridges in the metal floor, his footsteps echoing in the empty chamber. Beneath the ridges were a network of wires, all connected to the god. They reported on all of his vitals, translating them into the numbers on the screen. He ascends the chrome-plated steps, lights following his every footstep. 

 Hewn from the floors beneath, the metal platform seemed to have been yanked from the floor by a pair of strong hands. Lights pulsated in waves across the metal. Tempered glass sealed away the rest of the world from the god, ensuring that his eternal slumber would remain eternal. Kite walks up to the cradle and places his hand on the glass. He leans closer to the god, his breath fogging up the crystalline surface. 

 This is the closest they will ever be, the glass barrier preventing their flesh from ever touching. 

 Up close, Kite drinks in V’s unusual beauty. No one else has hair the color of starlight. In his years outside of the temple, he doesn’t remember seeing anyone with such long limbs and delicate fingers. Like him, everyone on Dysonia had short and sturdy limbs to survive the constraints of space. The god’s face is sculpted as if it were a marble statue from the home planet. It is still and pale, seemingly made more of stone than flesh. 

 Ever so slightly, Kite can see the god’s chest rise and fall in his bodysuit of silver circuitry. 

 Blip. Blip. The readings on the monitor slightly rise. Kite pays it no attention. Like clockwork, V was tending to the colony’s lights in preparation for night. He scans V’s face for any signs of exertion. Nothing. Centuries of being a god must have made everything routine for V, akin to an instinct. 

 A small sigh escapes from the lone priest. Generations of his rank have tended to their god. Kite knows he will not be the last.

 In hushed tones, he knows that there are other gods in other distant colonies, tended to by the same legions of white-coated priests. Stella. Albus. Gaia. Just like his V, encased in cradles of glass and steel. 

 He cannot call these gods human because they are no longer human. Their true names have been left on the ruins of the home planet, left to blow away in the dust storms. They are gods now, remnants of a mythical world far beyond the reaches of the galaxy. 

 “V…,” murmurs Kite, his voice echoing over the hum of the machinery. 

 Sometimes the god’s eyes will flutter, especially during an unscheduled rain shower. Rarely, they may even open, revealing a glimpse of the most brilliant pair of blue eyes. V does none of these things when Kite calls his name. 

 “Involuntary muscle movement,” explained the head priest, Zythos. “He can’t see you.”

 A part of Kite wishes he would.