Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

The Antares Cigar Shoppe

Originally published in The Immortality Chronicles by Samuel Peralta, Windrift Books

GASTON SAT IN HIS USUAL SPOT on the bench just inside the cigar shoppe. The shoppe itself was wedged into a half-circle of retail buildings that curved in a graceful arc from the traveler hostels, and ultimately emptied onto a broad collection of ticket turnstiles leading to the east. Ornately fashioned gates of metal (really sculptures by any sane definition) opened to the rocket pads. Light-duty sentinels stood at the kiosks, relaxed because there was really no threat to deter. Hadn’t been, for as long as anyone could remember.

The village where Gaston had found himself catered to the interstellar trade. Travelers consisted of families, business agents, and the occasional religious pilgrim. The number of transient persons far outnumbered the locals, though the ratio fluctuated.

But even local people were themselves transient, making or losing their fortunes and relocating somewhere else down the line.

Universal credits passed from hand to hand. Products and services that a traveler had forgotten, and wanted, were offered for sale. There were plenty of taverns for people who actually wanted to forget the things they had left behind, or to celebrate what awaited them at new destinations.

There was a back door to the cigar shoppe, but it emptied onto nothing but sand and dirt. Gaston faced the entrance instead, and calculated the total number of dust motes as they were revealed by a shaft of orange light.

The number was without significance. He discarded the information.

Mr. Arsenault, who acted as owner, crossed in front of Gaston and pressed a small black button at the entrance. An ionizer expelled the dust particles through a semi-permeable membrane. The security barrier automatically rolled into the top frame of the store like an antique roll-top desk would have, on Earth, long ago.

The Antares Cigar Shoppe was open for business.

Gaston hummed to himself and leaned back to watch Mr. Arsenault perform the myriad tiny chores one does when readying a shoppe for customers. These were mostly silent, arcane and needlessly busy things. Gaston caught his eye and politely nodded. Mr. Arsenault smiled shyly before returning to work.

Gaston always stationed himself at the bench because he enjoyed chatting with travelers, if they felt like it. You never knew who would. In case no one stopped by, he enjoyed chatting just with Mr. Arsenault.

This morning’s disconnected parade along the arc was heavier than usual. Some were in a dreadful hurry, having forgotten to set alarms or having slept through wake-up calls pre-arranged at their hostels.

Others comfortably savored their time, looking at scenery, absorbing memories. Dawdling.

Gaston considered the travelers to be his scenery.

“Do you think we’ll see many sales?” Mr. Arsenault asked, nervously sitting down on the bench next to Gaston, their legs accidentally touching. They both looked out onto the walkway instead of at each other.

Gaston reflected, “Well, there are eighteen scheduled launches this cycle. Factoring in various seating counts dependent on manufacturer, there is a potential for six to seven thousand passengers. Of those…”

Mr. Arsenault looked at Gaston and sighed. “I was just shooting the breeze, Gaston. You don’t have to actually predict anything.”

Gaston’s smile dropped fractionally.

Mr. Arsenault rubbed his large hands against his knees and hesitated as if about to say something. Gaston waited, but was ungifted with whatever treasure was percolating inside the owner’s head.

Over the roofs of the shoppes across the arc peeked an assortment of nosecones and fuselages, standing straight at attention.

“Those two look like M-class,” Mr. Arsenault began.

“Actually M-Theta class…” Gaston interrupted, then drifted off when he caught the withering look of Mr. Arsenault out of the corner of his viz-screen.

Not for the first time, Gaston reminded himself to listen more, and stop ending conversations before they began. “But it’s true there is little difference to the naked eye,” he offered as consolation.

Mr. Arsenault responded by pushing against his knees and levering himself off the bench. He walked to the counter deeper inside the shoppe.

He opened his private humidor underneath the counter and selected a slim perfecto, then added a small selection of other cigars to his breast pocket. He returned to stand next to the bench with a cutter and a tiny yet clever lighter.

Gaston gazed out onto the moving street. For a moment, he saw a river of blood flowing deep, as high as people’s calves.

No. Not yet.

He closed his eyes and mentally turned a virtual switch in his head to shut off the image.

When he opened them again, he saw the orange light of Antares bathing everything in apricot. Even the exhaust streams of coiled smoke that pushed rockets away from the encumbering planet were stained in color. He relaxed.

The shadows shone a brilliant blue against the light, unlike the grey shadows of ancient Earth. It reminded Gaston of the Maxfield Parrish painting Night Is Fled. He repeatedly viewed the art nouveau image in his databanks. It was one of his favorites. No one living could have seen it so they could discuss its beauty together. That should have made him sad; instead he just felt empty.

Today was launch optimal: no capricious gusts, no predicted rainstorms, and limitless visibility. The complex gravitational interrelationship between red supergiant Antares and its companion blue dwarf Antares B made Curie Prime an ideal planet for a rocket port. It was one of many places in the galaxy where multiple wormholes could remain coherent.

A gaunt young man in an expensive suit stood still on the walkway, allowing it to move him past the shoppes as he gawked at the assorted items for sale. Mr. Arsenault waved his unlit cigar at him, holding it between his fingers as if it were already lit and he were already enjoying it.

“Say, is that a Delphian Ultra?” the man asked as he stepped off. The walkway continued on without him.

“No, it’s a Badeaux. But the aroma is far superior to a Delphian, I promise you,” Mr. Arsenault answered, using his fingers to pantomime waving nonexistent smoke to his nostrils.

Gaston had noted the precise moment the man had made his decision to step off the walkway. He observed a slight change in expression, the tightening of irises and accelerated breathing. The number of neurons involved in creating one microsecond of differential choice was staggering, he observed. A human brain employed countless temporary synaptic configurations when making any decision. The afterimages of the resulting patterns remained as vestigial ghosts in the cerebral cortex.

“Great morning for a rocket trip,” Gaston offered amiably, waving a metal-clad hand with articulated fingers.

The man paused at the edge of the shoppe and stared at Gaston. Mr. Arsenault recovered the incident quickly by extending the cigar to him.

“Do you know much about the Badeaux? No? Let me explain the source of its magnificent aroma. Harvested at the precise peak of maturity, the leaves are delicately aged over steam produced from slowly roasting silkworms. The essence of their secretions in death adds a tantalizing lift to the palate, which mixes deliciously with the tang of exotic Rigellian tobacco leaves,” Mr. Arsenault said, imposing himself between the man and Gaston, redirecting the man’s attention back to the product.

The owner continued to extol the virtues of the cigar with a hypnotic rhythm, like a seductive siren calling to a lost sailor. He finally paused, and the customer nearly fell forward, unaware he had been incrementally leaning in closer and closer, drifting along the stream of finely crafted words.

Gaston had experienced this spiel before, but he never tired of it. There was always a variation, a shading of a word here, an accent on a syllable there. He treasured hearing it.

Still, he discarded it from his memory for being too repetitious.

Mr. Arsenault used a small brass guillotine to remove the cap end of the perfecto. He activated a lighter and sensuously rolled the foot of the cigar over the tiny flame, lightly heating the tobacco inside. The man was mesmerized by the process.

The owner handed it gently to the customer as if it were a holy religious totem. The young man seemed afraid to take it for fear of dropping it.

“No, go ahead and place it in your mouth. That’s it. Don’t worry, it’s just a free sample for a new customer.”

Mr. Arsenault placed the lighter just beyond the end of the cigar and demonstrated how to draw in the flame, in case the man had no idea of the proper way to smoke a fine cigar.

Gaston was briefly fascinated by how the flame reshaped itself in the random patterns of the man’s breath. But it was close enough to previous observations that he decided to discard the image.

The customer closed his eyes in pleasure as the flavor of the smoke acquainted itself with his palate.

Then he pointed at the bench where Gaston sat. “Where did you get that?” he asked.

Like dogs and small children will, Gaston looked at the end of the man’s finger, instead of where he was pointing.

Mr. Arsenault shrugged and said apologetically, “He came with the store. When I started the business, he was already here. I haven’t the heart or the ability to remove him.” Then he laughed lightly. “But weren’t we just talking about cigars?” He glanced out of the corner of his eye to make sure Gaston was not upset.

Gaston had heard that chestnut of deflection so many times, he was no longer actually offended. Instead, he pretended not to notice and patted the space next to him on the bench. “Here’s a comfortable place to sit and enjoy your cigar, Mr…?”

“Montreuil. Jean Montreuil.” He hesitated briefly, then, with a nod to the store owner, he gingerly sat down next to Gaston. The owner strolled back to the counter, knowing that a customer enjoying a cigar was as good a billboard as one could have.

“Are you traveling today?” Gaston asked politely. He made sure to rotate in his most genial expression. He resisted the urge to lean in closer.

“Yes, I’m scheduled to arrive on Tau Ceti this evening. Or their evening. There is an arrangement of marriage waiting for me on the second planet.” His expression turned to equal parts excitement and dread.

“Oh? Are you Neo-shintolic, then?” Gaston chose one of a handful of current religions that practiced arranged marriages.

“I personally am not very religious at all. But my bride-to-be’s family is orthodox, and rather insistent upon custom.”

Montreuil drew on the cigar and staged a minor celebration as he managed to puff a wobbling ring. It spun slowly until the integrity of the circle distorted and it dissipated in the air.

“Remarkable. Then you are graciously honoring her religion, as a gesture of political goodwill?” Gaston asked, hoping that this was a new cultural variant.

“Political?” Mr. Montreuil’s eyebrows drew together as he posed the question to himself. After another exhalation of fragrant smoke, he answered. “Depends on how you define political. The dowry is sinfully large. The number of marriageable men on Tau Ceti is low. Some sort of mining mishap, or asteroid strike, I’ve been led to believe. My future father-in-law owns one of the more profitable mines,” he said, being very transparent as to what the marriage would mean to his own fortunes as the eventual inheritor of the mine.

Gaston compared that information to actual data. The shortage of men at Montreuil’s destination was exaggerated. The daughter was likely Gabrielle Trunduel, whose father was the owner of Trunduel Enterprises. Her image was markedly, almost painfully plain, judging by accepted human standards, and her father had not been completely honest with Mr. Montreuil. Instead, he had withheld information to achieve a desired outcome. An old strategy, but a new permutation, taking advantage of an interstellar knowledge deficit. Gaston decided to flag it and keep an eye on it.

Montreuil glanced at his chronometer and reluctantly got up, taking a few more rushed draws before he extinguished the cigar in the provided collector. He did arrange to carry a large box of the special cigars as a gift for his future father-in-law.

As he was leaving, Gaston stopped him. “You know, Mr. Montreuil…”

“Yes?”

“Wanting to be loved is not a crime.”

“Meaning?” The young man canted his hip and stared at Gaston.

“Meaning, you will meet all sorts of people there. What they are is often not their fault. Pay attention instead towho they are. All life is precious. Let your first instinct be to show kindness.”

The man screwed up his face to retort something angry, but the meaning of the message filtered through. He nodded in assent and stepped back onto the walkway, strolling quickly to add speed.

First checkmark of the day.

The owner opened the collector to retrieve the discarded cigar and proceeded to finish the remainder. No sense letting it going to waste.

He rubbed his hands nervously. “Why did you pick this bench, my store?” Mr. Arsenault wondered aloud. Gaston felt that that was just a small piece of the question he had really wanted to ask earlier, but had been afraid to. “Wouldn’t you meet more people in a restaurant at the rocket hub itself?” His face was impassive, but his eyes glimmered as he awaited the answer.

“Are you wishing me to move on?” Gaston asked.

“No, no, that’s not it at all.” The owner waved his arms in frustration.

“Mr. Arsenault, this location, this very store, this precise bench. It’s all the best sort of invitation to talk, to observe. A beautiful and relaxed pause in an otherwise hurried day,” Gaston explained.

Only partially relieved, the owner agreed. “True. One should never rush a good cigar.”

“Precisely.”

Lunchtime. Or what passed for it in a place with a rocket port where travelers operated on circadian rhythms separated not just by time zones, but galactic neighborhoods. The 12:18 rocket to the Andromeda wormhole blasted off on time, rumbling the ground.

Gaston observed its gradual gain on escape velocity, the greased easing as it surpassed it, and the distant thunk it made as it slipped into the corresponding opening in space-time. There was a series of portals in synchronous orbit around the planet. Each had its own specific flavor of thunk.

Average people performed acts of great bravery, or foolhardiness, traveling in modes which stretched the boundaries of their understanding of the laws of physics. By any normal logic, wormholes shouldn’t work at all. That didn’t stop them.

A rush of passengers had just disembarked from an arriving rocket. One piece of the crowd, a family, paused to borrow part of the bench and allow their little girl a rest for her stubby legs. Walking, even on the treadway, appeared to be a chore for her labored lungs. The mother and father stood close by with another child, an adolescent boy. The girl appeared roughly eight Earth standard revolutions old. It was difficult to gauge exactly, because Gaston recognized the telltale signs of Down syndrome.

She climbed cheerfully up next to Gaston with no preamble at all, and stared directly at him for a long time, inspecting his mirrored visor, his metal limbs. She laughed, and her grin was an amazingly beautiful thing. Gaston knew already he was going to keep this memory.

“Who’re you?” she asked with a slight lisp. She did not say, What are you?, which he appreciated.

He rotated projections to put on his most kindly face. “Gaston,” he replied. “And who are you?”

“Chantal,” she answered boldly, acting as if her family were not really there to rescue her at any moment from the strange thing at the other end of the bench.

But he could see through the bravado to her struggle with curiosity. She was burning to know. He altered the direction of the conversation before she could ask the inevitable and obvious question, the one that adults were usually too polite to bring up. Politeness, he knew, was a skill that took time to learn. Children almost never mastered it, but made up for it with increased adorableness.

“Let me ask you a question. Do you dream, Chantal?”

“Yes, of course, silly Gaston. Everybody dreams.” She rolled her eyes and laughed. She didn’t just laugh with her face. Her whole body was involved.

“Can you remember one to tell me? I collect them.”

She held her finger to her lips in melodramatic fashion to let him know she was thinking. She bounced it off her lips a couple of times.

“A bear was chasing me around a tree.” She formed her hands into claws and hunched up her shoulders to look formidable. “And I ran and ran until my feet turned into roller skates made of tumblebugs. Only they weren’t really roller skates because they didn’t roll but they lifted me off the ground until the bear passed right under me. He couldn’t see me so he kept running until he disappeared far down the trail.”

“I see. Was it a grizzly bear?”

“What’s a grizzly bear?”

“Here,” Gaston said as he lifted up the palm of his hand. The hologram projected a segmented ribbon containing photos of different kinds of bears as it rotated in a circle. He flicked at one picture and it enlarged in the center of the circle on a disc. “Is this the kind of bear it was?”

“No. The bear was fuzzy pink,” she directed seriously.

A glowing line passed through the hologram of the grizzly bear from top to bottom. As it passed through, it turned the fur pink.

“Oh! And it had seven legs!” She nodded with certainty.

“Seven? Really? How did it walk?” Gaston laughed. “Okay. Three more legs coming up.”

The image sprouted the improbable legs.

“And it had a golden dress on…” Chantal was trying very hard not to smile, but the corners of her mouth betrayed her, quirking up ever so slightly.

“Did it maybe also have butterfly wings?” Gaston asked oh-so-seriously in return.

“No, they were dragonfly wings. All shiny and see-through.”

The hologram lifted up off Gaston’s palm and hovered in flight. It winked at the little girl. Chantal clapped her hands with delight.

“Was this your dream bear?”

“No, not at all, but isn’t this one much prettier?” she asked.

“Yes, it is, in fact,” Gaston said, storing the memory of the image and especially the interchange with the girl.

“C’mon, Chantal, we have to catch a rocket,” said her brother.

The girl flounced off the bench and waved backwards over the top of her head without really looking back. “G’bye, Gaston!” she squealed joyously.

“Wait, Chantal!” he called as he plugged in a carbon block to the matter printer. “Don’t you want your doll?”

The little girl ran back, breathless. A few seconds later, the printer kicked out a cloth pink bear with dragonfly wings.

“Oooooh,” Chantal said as she examined it from every angle.

“Okay, sweetie, thank the man…robot…thing,” said her mother.

Gaston didn’t bother correcting her.

Three bright million years ago,

a madman plied his vicious war

Drank darkened blood

from vanquished suns

Struck wide his iron-bladed fist

Swung dread and cruel

his strengthened arms

Planets, stars, and harried men

fled wormhole armies evermore

—Lamentations of the Purge, Tsu’ar Venadi

Dusk.

There was no real night. The gargantuan curve of Antares never quite left the horizon. It just dipped lower, diminishing its influence. Bluish shadows unfolded longer, turning more purple.

It was a time for easily mistaking one thing for another in the muddled play of light. Briefly Antares B, the companion star, could be seen hanging in the sky, the apparent size of a credit coin. Compared to the primary star it was faded and barely blue, like a reflection in a smudged window.

The Antares Cigar Shoppe did not close, not just yet. For now came the second tide, the neighboring shoppe owners. After they shuttered down their collapsing doors and twisted their keys into oversized locks, some carried their bags and satchels to the Cigar Shoppe for an evening smoke.

Gaston retained tiny recognition spaces in his mind for each of them. Some had families they were neglecting by staying. To them it was worth it; a man (or a woman, or a thing) sought ways to unwind at the end of the day. To chat, maybe drink from a concealed flask and share a fine cigar.

Mr. Arsenault and Gaston sat close together on the bench while the rest sat on scavenged boxes or crates or collapsible chairs they’d brought with them. Mrs. Plouffe preferred to stand, no matter how late into the night her visit went. She was a tough older woman with legs like tree trunks and a solid torso. She had probably been pretty in her day, and some of that still sifted through, especially if she laughed.

Mr. Arsenault made the rounds with cigars and lighters, always taking care of others before he came back to the bench. He kept in reserve a special smile for Gaston, and a sideways glance or two most nights. Tonight he still seemed bottled up, still wanting to address something between them, when and if they had some time alone.

But right now was the group, the ‘club’ they sometimes called it. Often they’d chatter and talk, raising their voices to be heard over each other, and sometimes they’d become tangled in awkward silence as a topic would falter, none of them knowing what topic to broach next or whose turn it was to jump in.

Sitting in groups like this, in the deepening dark of evenings, was something so utterly human that it had been unconsciously practiced on hundreds of worlds throughout the galaxy. An unintentional thread of connection that maybe only Gaston realized.

Perhaps those who were mortal clung jealously to every moment, understanding their fleeting nature which would wilt under the inexorable march of time and the heat of various suns.

“Let’s play Faux ou Vrai—false or true, then,” Mrs. Plouffe suggested after one of those awkward silences had stretched on a bit long. “I’ll start. Faux ou vrai: I was once an exotic pole dancer, making money from tips.”

This brought some laughter, which made her face redden. There were a few coughs and the rest quieted down.

Mr. Lemieux said, “I will say true. You do have smoldering…eyes.”

But when they voted, most thought it was not true,faux.

“Well, which is it, Mrs. Plouffe?” pressed Mr. Navarre.

She pulled herself up straighter and patted her hair. “Vrai. True. When I was very young, with little money, I danced in a rocket port on Rimroude, the fourth planet in the XC117 system. I was the best earner,” she laughed, “but I got out as soon as I could, and used my money to open up my shoppe.”

The rest of the group applauded. Mr. Pascale even requested a demonstration, which earned him a slap on the arm.

They played the game, going around the circle, until it fell on Gaston.

“Wait. Does Gaston get to play?” Mr. Navarre objected. “I mean, can a robot lie, Mr. Arsenault?”

Mr. Arsenault shrugged and looked at Gaston, motioning for him to answer.

“Well, that’s an interesting question. I could tell you that I never lie, which could be a lie, but you wouldn’t be able to tell. Why not let me play, and you can find out?”

Everyone nodded, though Mr. Navarre just stared.

Gaston put his hands behind his head and turned a virtual switch in his mind that no one could see. “Faux ou vrai: Mr. Arsenault invented wormhole travel.”

“What?” Mr. Arsenault leapt off the bench and turned to face Gaston.

“Faux, obviously,” declared Mr. Navarre. “Well, I think we now know robots can lie, at least for the purpose of the game. I know you’re pulling our leg. Wormholes are natural phenomena that occur when space folds in on itself. Everyone knows that.”

That made Mr. Arsenault shake his head as he sat back down. He inched slightly away from Gaston, looking as if he’d been betrayed.

“Faux,” voted Mrs. Plouffe as well. The rest followed suit.

“I think I win the game,” Gaston said. “Because it’svrai. True.”

“I did not invent wormholes,” Mr. Arsenault insisted.

Gaston moved his metal-clad arms. “No, of course not. But the person who invented them was also named Mr. Arsenault.”

The merchants all glared at Gaston.

“Okay, this will take some time to explain.”

The listeners shifted in their hodgepodge of seats.

Gaston leaned forward. “Many years ago, a boy was born, naked like any other, but there was one thing different. He couldn’t die.”

“What?” blurted Mr. Lemieux, nearly dropping his lit cigar in the sand, much to the amusement of everyone else.

“He didn’t notice at first, until his family and friends grew older and sicker and fell away from him, while his stubborn heart beat on. In the era in which he was born, people were ignorant and superstitious. Was he a demon? they wondered. An angel? A vampire? He didn’t know what he was, either. Suspicions festered, and there were no welcoming places for him. Some feared him, many hated him, because they didn’t understand. They tried to take him apart to discover his secret. They attempted to kill him. Each time he suffered great torture and pain until he could make his escape. Over time, he grew smarter. He vowed to never be at someone else’s mercy again.

“He trained in every discipline of war. He learned strategy and the use of power from the masters of each of his lifetimes. Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, Hitler…”

Mr. Navarre objected, “Who are these people? I’ve never heard of them.”

“Their names have been lost for millions of years. They were iconic masters of war and programs of inflicted suffering.”

In the haphazard circle, they looked warily at each other at the word ‘suffering.’

“He became the greatest warlord his world had ever known. Or never wanted to know. But it was not enough. He wanted more. As science and weapon-making progressed, he kept up. He amassed wealth and power behind the scenes, choosing to exist in the shadows while his proxies proceeded under his explicit orchestration. What he didn’t know, he obtained from those he coerced or enslaved. Eventually, his top scientist happened upon the technology to make wormholes.”

“I assume his name was Arsenault,” said Mr. Arsenault.

Gaston nodded.

It was now as night as it would ever be on Curie Prime. Gaston pointed to the stars visible on the side of the canopy of sky not dominated by Antares. There weren’t just a few stars visible, like there had been on old Earth. There were trillions and trillions, numbers larger than could be conceived.

“All those stars. The warlord coveted them. He hungered to own them. Time did not limit him. Once he had in place a wormhole network, his lackeys colonized or terraformed planets across the galaxy. It took centuries, until all known livable space was his to rule.”

“I feel like there is a ‘but’ to this story,” Mr. Lemieux noted.

“Yes,” Gaston continued. “Even immortality is not perfect. It’s been claimed that a human brain is only partially utilized, with a lot of growing space to take on new memories and thoughts.”

“I’ve heard it’s twenty percent,” said Mrs. Plouffe, “although my husband uses a lot less than that.”

Many in the circle laughed, knowing her husband.

“After a thousand years, the warlord ran into a wall. The brain is an amazing organ, but even an immortal one has a storage limit. His neurons and synaptic pathways had overwritten themselves too many times. His immortal ability to regenerate began to spontaneously reformat gray matter containing important information, gradually corrupting his mind’s ability to remember and even function. He became insane,” Gaston said.

“Wasn’t he already insane? I mean, the desire to control everything?” asked Mr. Navarre.

“Yes, in a way. Once the situation became clear, he made his scientists devote all their attention to a solution. But they couldn’t alter his cells to store more. Every experiment ended up with the cell replacing itself with a fresh, new cell. There is a theoretical maximum boundary of knowledge that can exist in a confinement the size of a human skull. A normal lifespan would never trip this boundary. But an immortal life would have to, at some point.”

“So what happened?” asked Mr. Arsenault as he lit up a new cigar.

“The warlord developed uncontrollable brain injury. It was really brain renewal, of course, but his memories were being lost or scrambled at random. This resulted in increasingly erratic behavior and irrational rage. All the worlds he had built across the galaxy became targets for his bloodlust. There was a massive purge on planet after planet. His warriors feared him or were so misguidedly loyal that they followed his directives without question. Further, as best he could, he tightened his inner circle to prevent leaks about what was happening to him.”

“But I don’t remember reading about any purges,” Mrs. Plouffe objected. Others in the group nodded along with her.

“How far back does the historical record go?” Gaston asked her.

“I don’t know, maybe ten thousand years?” She glanced at the others present to get a confirmation.

“Sounds about right to me,” said Mr. Lemieux.

“Well, these events occurred millions of years ago,” Gaston explained.

“So this happened before written records?” Mr. Navarre asked.

Gaston bowed and rolled his shoulders apologetically. “Vrai,” he nearly whispered.

Mr. Lemieux looked around the group. “There is no way to verify or disprove it, then.”

“I knew letting the robot play was a bad idea,” added Mr. Navarre. “Anyone else want to keep playing? I don’t.”

The topic changed uncomfortably and the game was abandoned. No one wanted to cross Mr. Navarre. He had a habit of escalating disagreements.

The group eventually spoke the small talk of goodbyes, and gathered up their items to go to their homes or to the sleeping spaces above or behind or below their shoppes. Mr. Arsenault waited until it was only he and Gaston left behind, and rolled down the front gate. They both walked into the shoppe, then walked down to the apartment below the building.

As they were walking, Gaston flipped the virtual switch in his head.

Now. It is time.

He allowed the recording to overtake him.

The river of blood flowed deep, as high as a person’s calf. The warlord stood in the street, his armor bathed in drying blood. This was one of the last planets with human life. Life seeded by him in centuries past. All he could think was, ‘Why?’ What was the point? On his orders the warriors had traveled the wormhole highways and helped him destroy life on planet after planet.

He vibrated in blind fury, in contempt and confusion. He couldn’t concentrate on anything but death, and thirst for killing. There was a feral animal in his breast.

He saw red everywhere. It churned in him, the bile and the anger. It filled his mind until his eyes reacted and filmed over.

As he watched, a man wearing the uniform of his science division walked up to him and said words. Just words. He thought he should recognize the words, but he could not. The words had no meaning. He had forgotten words. He had lost the way of them.

The man bowed, and then rose up to caress him and kiss him gently on the cheek. At first, he pulled back in alarm. Then he did remember something. Scenes like this, being held like this, maybe by this same man. Kissed and even loved. And then those connected thoughts unraveled until he was left with nothing but breath and pressure.

The kissing man pulled something out of his uniform, said more words empty of meaning.

Something was jabbed into his neck.

His body, trained by centuries of fighting, reacted instinctively. The warlord let out a guttural and savage scream. Swifter than thought, his weapon sliced off the man’s head. The body crumpled into the gore in the street. The head spun and landed at his feet. He watched it happen without comprehending.

Then he began to feel strange. Something opened a discreet window in his mind. A recorded voice in his head recited instructions, and on some level, his mind obeyed, even though he did not yet understand the words.

His mind opened. And opened again, like a piece of intricate origami unfolding. A great breeze traveled through him, cleansing and beautiful. His thoughts traveled beyond him, to a waiting repository of data. It was a comprehensive library of all recorded history, greater than the largest libraries ever constructed.

He touched the first file, and it rebooted his mind, overwriting the empty and jumbled cells with a robust template of streamlined understanding. At first, he was overjoyed to be able to think clearly.

The plans were there for the clever mechanism that had been implanted in him by the man at his feet. It explained that there was no more room inside the warlord’s head, but a whole universe outside of it. The scientist had found a way to connect the warlord’s brain to the matter of asteroids, planets, and nebula dust. He had designed a virtual wormhole that would work inside the warlord’s head to store his memories outside the limited skull box that held his brain.

In the data repository he found a data trail about himself, through the words and the thoughts of others, in a million books and articles. Photographs of the mindless purge stared starkly back at him. Antiseptic data. No bias, only truth.

He UNDERSTOOD.

He wept, for he knew now that he had become insane.

He reached into the blood and lifted up the head of what he realized was his scientist, his lover, his savior. Lifeless, the face dripped blood from the off-center mustache that the warlord remembered loving once.

He collapsed to his knees, holding the head to his breast while his warriors looked on in bewilderment.

There were only a handful of survivors.

Would it be enough?

It must be.

It had to be.

Gaston stood watching Mr. Arsenault put things away in the apartment below the shoppe. He looked everywhere but at Gaston.

“What did you want to ask me today?”

Mr. Arsenault shrugged. His struggle played over his face. “Why do you continue to sit here, day after day?”

“You already asked me that. I mean, what did youreally want to ask?”

“Well, I mean…Why would you stay here with me? I’m just a cigar shoppe owner.”

Gaston walked over to him and held the man’s face in his articulated metal fingers. “No one is ever ‘just’ anything. If you haven’t figured out by now why I stick around, I don’t feel inclined to tell you. Except for this.”

Gaston lifted the mirror visor from his face and kissed dear sweet Mr. Arsenault, with his off-center mustache. And he was kissed back, for quite a long time.

“Love is the only thing that becomes more valuable the more you remember it,” Gaston said.

Gently, he reached behind Mr. Arsenault’s neck and tapped a discrete button to shut him down for the night. With a twist, he removed the robot’s head and held it to his chest and rocked.

“And I have a whole planet devoted just to remembering you,” Gaston whispered, “and how you saved me, long ago.”

The parts of Mr. Arsenault were lovingly packed away in a special box to recharge until tomorrow.

When he was done, Gaston removed the metal devices and plastics attached to his body. Where they had been embedded into his skin, he watched as his pierced flesh regenerated.

The dead cells fell to the floor and became dust.

No one asks why a robot doesn’t age.

Gaston erased the unimportant memories of his day. Then, one by one, he shuttled the ones he wanted to treasure into the virtual wormhole leading to his backup, which for the last several decades had been a gas giant planet in the Europa cluster.