Zion's Fiction: A Treasury of Israeli Speculative Literature

Burn Alexandria ^{Keren Landsman}

The sound of the bell woke me up.

“Don’t take it,” murmured Yonit out of her slumber.

“I have to take it,” I said, but she was already fast asleep again. I rubbed my eyes and found the switch in the darkened room.

“We have a five-seven-twenty. Still closed. Military’s deployed. Waiting for us,” said Shir at the other end. I coughed. He waited, and when I didn’t reply, he sighed. I know exactly how he looks when he lets out that sigh. “Invasion. You, of all people in the Universe, should remember that—”

“I do remember that everything beginning with a five means invasion, and that this instance does not require urgent intervention,” I interrupted him. “But what’s with the twenty?” Shir had this talent for memorizing protocols in far too many details than our ordinary work required.

Shir sighed again. I knew he sighed again because he kept silent, and when he finally spoke, his voice was half-a-tone lower, and he was distinctly stressing each word. “Seven – twenty. Seven – twenty.”

“Seven – twenty,” I mimicked him.

“Multiple hits. But a single location, so far.”

“Shit.” Now I was fully awake.

“As I was saying.” He hesitated for a moment. “You’re coming, aren’t you? I don’t have to alert… the Others?”

“No, of course not. I mean, yes, I’m coming. You don’t have to alert anyone else.” Neither he nor I wanted to call our Superiors in the middle of the night. We never got any help worth a damn from them, and even just reporting things could have serious consequences.

“Sending you a bubble.” Shir hung up.

When I went out, Yonit opened half an eye and murmured, “Take care,” hogging the entire blanket.

The white bubble stopped outside our house and opened to my touch. Inside, the screen was showing the movie of the month, and the sound system played calming Muzak. I would have been happier if I could link up with the Office and download data rather than listen to a selection of identically senseless tunes, but I don’t have the budget for a secure download, and the Office doesn’t have the budget to send me a coded private bubble. Instead of linking up with the Office, I connected with the Cloud and downloaded instructions for knitting a complicated scarf.

The bubble stopped jarringly in a black, open square surrounded by blocks of darkened buildings. This was the new construction zone, not yet occupied. A network of reflectors pulsed light around a sphere of darkness. I left the bubble, which flew off immediately to take the next passenger. There were no other bubbles there. The network of reflectors turned out to be a cordon of soldiers. They were whispering when my bubble disappeared. One beam of light approached me, coming off a band around Shir’s head. He was dressed eclectically, like the rest of us, distinguished only by a white tag bearing the letter S.

“You’re scaring all these aliens away,” I said, stepping forward.

The beam turned toward me. Shir grinned. “I wish it were this easy….”

I smiled in reply, took out my headband, and put it on. The soldiers stood at ease. I gave them a nod. You couldn’t see their faces in the darkness.

“Did you know that Fraud Division has light implants?” Shir gestured at the darkness.

“That’s because they’re not as elegant as we are.” I waited for the implant to synchronize with the headband. The light was just an excuse. The really important part of the band was the add-on that interfaced directly with my nerve center. Space spread out in front of me, shining in various electromagnetic wavelengths, giving darkness shape and form.

Beside me Shir took an orange-red hue. The pineapples embroidered on his dress lay dark against his body. The air he breathed in became dark blue inside his chest, then turned red before it was exhaled. The line of soldiers pulsated in green. Their guns were totally black, except for the stocks, which were red where warmed by their hands. The buildings were painted violet, in threads. I could see where rooms were sprouting up at the tops of these buildings.

Between the buildings, in the space in front of me, lay darkness—a large, dark sphere, not radiating in any wavelength our headbands could identify. I ran a basic analysis. It came back empty. You could see the patch of ground touched by the sphere.

“They reported multiple hits,” Shir said quietly.

“Obviously.” I breathed in. The air smelled of burnt gasoline and fertilized soil. “Buildings were damaged,” I said. Buildings had to be grown and cultivated, at immense expense. We were a by-product of the planet, nothing worth preserving.

Shir crossed his arms over his chest. “Someday they’ll realize how important individual lives are.”

I patted his shoulder. “And then they’ll destroy the lot of us.”

He grinned, nodding toward the dark sphere. “Shall we take samples?”

“I’d like to send a query…,” I started.

Shir raised his hand to stop me. “Already checked. Analysis came back empty. No similar reports in the past, the Superiors don’t know what the external shell is made of, and it’s definitely not an alien we know of.”

I shut my mouth.

“Took you a lot of time to get here.” Shir shrugged. “I got bored.”

I shook my head. “We really ought to find you some hobby.”

I switched off my band. It sucked up too much energy and added no information. I removed it, put it in my jacket pocket. Shir did the same. I moved in across the cordon of soldiers, got down on one knee, and touched the ground with my hand. Analysis came back as ordinary soil, and I felt nothing unusual. Half a meter away from me, there was blackness. I pulled at the top of Shir’s cowboy boots. “Come here, tell me what you can feel.”

He knelt beside me and put his hand next to mine. His sensory interface was better than mine, more advanced. He turned his face to me.

“Feel anything?”

He nodded. “Something.” Shir dug deeper with both hands. “It doesn’t feel compacted.” He sniffed. “And the smell is ordinary,” he added.

“Nothing burned or destroyed. I don’t think it crashed here.”

Shir nodded, slowly, and stared at the darkness in front of us. “It grew up here?”

His processing interfaces were better than mine, but my intuition was much better than his.

“Appeared,” I said, quietly, “and swallowed up everything around it.”

Shir stopped breathing.

“This is a space-warp field,” I said. He nodded. I could almost hear his memories reappearing. We both had memories of all those invasions since the very first one, which also began with a warp field. Only that one had appeared in the middle of the ocean, split into dozens of smaller fields and spread all over the planet within days. While this sphere just… stood here.

Shir pulled his hands out of the ground. “Do you want to call… Them?”

“No,” I replied in a hurry, before he could send a query to Central. I pulled my own hands out of the ground and shook off the dirt. “And neither do you.”

Shir shook his head and said, not looking at me, “I don’t. But if it’s another invasion….” He looked at me. “Too late to transfer to Fraud Division?” He smiled.

“You really fancy their light implants, don’t you?” I gave him a hand. He took it and I pulled him up.

“Plus the fact that they don’t have to charge off into unidentified alien spaceships.”

I nodded. “How old is your backup?”

“Twenty-eight minutes, after I disconnected from the bubble.”

I patted his shoulder. “Well, then everything is alright.”

Shir rolled his eyes. “You really like reconstructing, don’t you?”

Instead of answering him, I sent a data cluster to my backup, turned around, and gestured, “After you, Assistant Regional Inspector Ben-Yair.”

Shir smiled and offered me a sloppy salute. “Affirmative, Deputy Regional Inspector Potashnik, Ma’am.” He started walking towards the darkness. “Congratulations on your promotion, by the way,” he said, stopping one step away from the sphere. “Didn’t have time to say this day before yesterday.”

“Yes you did.” I stopped beside him. “And congratulating me twice won’t change the fact that you owe me a cherry pizza for getting ahead of you.”

“It’s abominable and I won’t have it!” Shir was saying the right words, but his voice was too strained for the quip to work. He hated reconstruction as much as I did, or even more so, because no one was waiting for him in the house he was returning to.

The soldiers had moved into attack positions, following an order I couldn’t hear. One of them saluted us. Shir and I interfaced for a joint countdown and started a simultaneous data streaming that went directly into our backups as well as to the other members of our unit. We breathed in together, breathed out together, laid our hands on the sphere together. The hard shell moved under my hand and softened in response to my touch.

Data exploded into my interface. I sent out as much as I could. I remembered how it felt. Just as it did in the Superiors’ invasion. Then we hadn’t been fast enough, and our reconstructions lacked data. We have changed our procedures since. Come the following invasions, self-destruct was timed so that as much information as possible will have been sent out before we were destroyed.

I engaged self-destruct.

I was waiting for the pain, smashing and sharp, and then a first breath and opening my eyes in a darkened room. On my right-hand side, future replicates of myself, on my left, just empty pods. In front of me, Shir’s replicates, senseless, unconscious. I had counted the empty pods once, then deleted the information and left an instruction for myself never to do that again.

I stopped breathing and closed my eyes. The pain didn’t come. Neither did the awakening in a darkened room. Data streaming continued. I opened my eyes. Shir was standing beside me, looking every bit as flabbergasted as I felt. I ran a self-analysis. Destruction sequence had not been initiated. The analysis pronounced the sphere safe.

The soldiers never reacted. They were not part of the countdown. All they knew was that they had to shoot at anything coming out of the sphere.

“If we disconnect…,” I whispered.

Shir nodded but did not reply. Something had stopped our physical destruction.

The surface of the sphere quivered and dissolved. Shir and I stumbled directly into it. As we crossed over, I felt a small vibration in my consciousness, a vaguely familiar one. I wanted to send a query to the Cloud, but communication was blocked. The surface of the sphere closed tight behind us.

Shir turned to me. “We can initiate self-destruct. Destroy this thing from the inside.”

Before I could reply, everything lit up around us. We found ourselves in a huge room, larger than any hall I’ve ever been in. In front of us a spiral wooden stairway materialized, and all around us there were shelves full of books, measurement instruments, statuettes, and potted plants. Beneath the stairway an old-fashioned globe materialized, showing the continents as they were ten thousand years ago. A man in a white robe smiled at me. “Salutations, O messengers of culture!” he said.

I tried to communicate with Shir subvocally, but all my outgoing frequencies were blocked. I could only scan things and collect information, not transmit.

“This is just a hologram,” said Shir, scratching his head.

“I know.” I studied the man. The details were near perfect. “But why should an invading species mimic Humans?”

“Distraction?” Shir clenched his fists.

I looked around. “But whatever for? We’re isolated. No command could breach this sphere.”

“To delay us?”

I shook my head. “It doesn’t make sense. None of the previous ones ever tried to use the basic command. They don’t even know about it.” I put my hands on my hips. “Maybe to download data ahead of an invasion?”

Shir scratched his head again. “I don’t sense any data download.”

I searched. “Scan you?”

Shir shook his head. “I scanned you. Nothing connected, at least so far as I can sense.”

The hologram stood frozen in front of us. Shir stepped forward. The hologram moved and indicated toward the stairway behind it. “Well met, O seekers of knowledge,” it said.

Shir turned to me. “An interface that responds to users’ movements,” he said. He snapped his fingers absentmindedly. “But why should an invasion begin with a responsive interface? Why don’t they just burst out and kill everyone?”

A smallish woman came out from among the shelves. “Sorry, sorry, excuse me, I’m sorry.” She was pulling on a white robe, similar to the hologram’s, as she came running straight at us, right through the man’s image.

“I truly am sorry, it took me some time to adjust the translator to the vernacular.” She stopped in front of us, breathing heavily. “You really should start cataloging your dictionaries correctly. I had to go through fifty zetta to get at the right terminology, all from separate sources.”

I scanned her. She was Human. Or at least the closest imitation of a Human my scans could identify. Shir let out his breath. I assumed his scan results were the same.

She was dark-haired and short, armed with eyeglasses and a scolding stare. I felt Shir cringing where he stood. The woman put out her hand. “Head Librarian, Alexandria, version eight.”

I didn’t offer my hand, and she withdrew hers. “Alexandria version eight?” I repeated, slowly. My access to the Cloud was blocked, and I couldn’t use our databases.

The woman waved her hands. “Well, they’ve kept coming up with more and more libraries that called themselves ‘the Great Library of Alexandria,’ and each and every time they were destroyed, or forgotten, or just became bureaucratic monstrosities that no longer stored any information. And there was also the one they filled with fireproof paper,” she snickered at a private joke, “as if leaving things on paper could ever be a good idea. But people are a sentimental lot, you know, and eventually….”

“Just a moment.” Shir took a step forward to stop the flow of chatter. “I don’t understand. Who are you?”

“Nuphar the Literate.” The woman smoothed down her robe. “I am the Head Librarian of the Great Unified Consolidated Library of Planet Earth, from Alexandria, 3067 by the common calendar.” Nuphar gestured in the general direction of the hologram. “I needed to have someone occupy you while we downloaded information. I apologize for taking so long to get here.”

Shir and I exchanged looks. He nodded in the direction from which we had entered, just a slight, hardly perceptible nod, followed by raised eyebrows. We’ve known each other long enough for me to interpret this, and I nodded in reply. Even if we could have left, it was our duty to stay and find out what’s going on. The woman facing us was a Human Being. This time we were not dealing with an invading species. It was… it was…. I didn’t know how to comprehend what it was.

Nuphar cleared her throat. “But I am here now. So… we can begin.”

“Begin?” I echoed.

Nuphar nodded in the affirmative. “Begin. We’ll have a round of introductions, and then you may call in the rest of your delegation.” She sent a look behind my shoulder. “You are part of a delegation, I hope? We’ve left very clear instructions.” She didn’t even stop for a breath of air. “Don’t worry, you are in a time bubble. No time is passing outside, so you’ll have ample time to invite them.”

A time bubble. This explained the space-warp we were in, and why we couldn’t send messages out.

“There is no delegation.” Shir shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He looked plain against the elegance surrounding us, dressed in his hodge-podge of fabrics, exactly like me.

Raising her hands, Nuphar sighed. “I can’t believe this is happening again!” She said. “I just can’t believe it. What’s wrong with humankind? We bring you knowledge, and culture, and… and….” She adjusted her glasses and passed her glance between Shir and myself. “Well, never mind, let’s do it properly.” She pointed at herself. “I, as I said, am Nuphar the Literate. And you are…?”

Shir and I exchanged looks again. He raised an eyebrow, tilting his head in Nuphar’s direction. I nodded. Once. She was Human, and we had the strictest orders regarding Human Beings. Shir tightened his lips, and I imagined I could hear the sigh he would have made, had we been in a place where he could afford to sigh.

“Oh, don’t tell me this stupid belief—that vouchsafing your name to a stranger allows someone to steal your soul—has survived to your time.” Nuphar was talking fast, and a lot, and I could hardly find my way among the words that were piling up atop each other.

Shir’s internal processor was faster than mine. “I am Shir Ben-Yair,” he pointed at himself, “Assistant Regional Inspector, Silence Unit, Northern Region.” He pointed at me. “And this is Romi Potashnik, Deputy Regional Inspector, Silence Unit, Northern Region.”

“Silence Unit?” Nuphar frowned. “Is this a librarians’ thing? Sounds offensive, really. Have you considered a name change?”

Shir laughed. Briefly. “Librarians.” He turned to me, tilting his head toward Nuphar. “Did you hear that? Do you want to be a librarian?”

I smiled. “Sounds like fun. What do librarians do?”

Nuphar gave me a searching look. “You don’t have any librarians?”

I shook my head.

“Who points book-lovers at the books they could love? Who cross-files information? Who keeps the records straight?” Nuphar was stressing each and every word now. “Who takes care of the libraries?”

This one I could answer. “Each person takes care of their own, of course. If you’re very close to someone, you can join your libraries.”

“And even then, not everything,” said Shir, quietly. I took care not to look at him. This was too personal. Yonit was still with me. Shir had lost his entire family before complete backups of them could have been created. I knew he used to go out from time to time to look at what was left of them, torn pieces of consciousness floating in a container that was unable to reconstitute them properly.

Nuphar turned her eyes from me to Shir, then back again. “But you don’t have places, physical places, to go to in order to find specific kinds of knowledge?”

We both shook our heads in unison. Nuphar looked through me, at the back wall, and sighed. I felt like I’d failed a test. She returned her eyes to me and straightened her back. “Very well. Come along, and I’ll show you what you’re missing,” she said, and the brightest smile I’ve ever seen appeared on her face.

The Great Unified Consolidated Library of Planet Earth, from Alexandria, 3067 by the common calendar, encompassed anything imaginable in mazes so complicated they could hardly be mapped. Papyruses locked in exquisite time-bubbles, shards of pottery preserved in climate-controlled rooms, figurines of ancient deities, shrouds, paintings, clothes, musical instruments, and dance simulations. And books. Lots of books. This was a full, complete record of Human history.

Nuphar was striding along, her robe swirling around her legs, occasionally exposing the colorful garments she wore underneath. It seemed that fashion in whatever place Nuphar came from included phosphorescent rhomboids and purple leggings. “We stop every three hundred years, give or take, and collect anything that needs to be documented. This is a compromise between our desire to document everything and the fact that it’s simply impossible to document everything,” she said. She pointed to a room full of animals, frozen in a variety of positions. “There were supposed to be people outside, waiting for us with your documentation, but seeing as you never got our instructions….” She left the rest of it hanging.

Shir slowed down. I pulled his arm. We had to keep up with Nuphar.

He cleared his throat and whispered in my ear, “How do they contain all these rooms?”

I shrugged. “Space-warp? We know they enclosed their ship in a time-warp field.”

Nuphar smoothed her hair with one hand and tucked a tuft of it behind her ear. She said, not looking at us, “We are not here at all. Just the vestibule is here. I mean, at your place. Meaning, in your space-time. As soon as we left that room we moved into my space-time.”

Shir cleared his throat. “Which is…?”

Nuphar stopped in front of a featureless round door and smiled again. “The Eighth Library of Alexandria. Established 3067, in existence for one hundred fifty-seven years now.”

Shir and I stopped in our tracks. I looked at Shir swiftly, noticing a slight grin showing in the corner of his lips. She brought us back in time. That explained everything. The hologram’s archaic speech, the strange globe in the vestibule, even the sumptuous décor. We could prevent the invasion. We could warn Humankind. We could fix the future in which we blow up again and again just to rise again in backup and continue to defend Earth from invasion, in the only way we had been able to devise.

I felt a similar grin stretching my own lips.

“We are inside a gigantic structure. Well, not one structure really, more like a collection of museums and libraries interlinked by bridges. All wrapped up in a single space-time bubble, and time here is disconnected from your time, but we do move forward in time, although at a different pace. And it is possible to come out, but only forward, to the time in which the vestibule is located.” Nuphar made a little bow. “I am a sixth-generationer. But we do have some who joined from the outside, not born here.”

“Born here….” said Shir. I felt a little better realizing that he too couldn’t follow her. All I could figure out was that we didn’t move back in time. We were in an isolated time-bubble, and we shall reemerge to the time from which we came. At least, I hoped this was the correct interpretation. We had little knowledge about space-time fields.

Nuphar nodded. “At the Library. It is too gigantic to be kept entirely out of the space-warp field. We only come out on stoppage duty, like now. Well, not exactly like now. Now you came in, but I didn’t get out, not yet. But I shall, and we’ll collect information about the current civilization. Let’s hope at least some of your information is properly cataloged, otherwise it will take us years, and then we’ll renew the instructions.” She turned back to the door and opened it, murmuring to herself, “I’m sick and tired of having to renew the instructions on each stoppage.”

Nuphar moved away from us, unaware that we didn’t enter through the doorway. This door she now opened led to an enormous hall, larger than the vestibule, but rather than plush stairways and holograms of bookshelves, this one was full of longish desks with green-shaded lamps. On both sides of these desks, filling the room, there were people. I saw seven hundred and twenty-four persons of various ages, wearing various garments that looked as if they were taken from the halls we’d passed through. Some were bent over books, others were conversing in whispers.

I stopped breathing. Shir grasped my hand. His hand was moist. I squeezed it. I have never seen so many Human Beings in one place. Not since the days of the first invasion. And even then, all those Humans were crowded in underground cellars, wearing rags, starving.

“Romi,” Shir whispered. He cleared his throat and said again, “Romi.”

I was afraid to use the scan. I didn’t want to find out that this too was a hologram. I heard Shir sniveling. I looked at him. Tears were running down his cheeks. My eyes too felt watery. I used my free hand to wipe away the teardrops. I should have made a quip, or asked him to pinch me, or done something else to relieve the tension. But nothing came to mind. No quip, no gesture. Just the thought that hundreds of Humans were sitting there in front of me, and none of them looked sick, or injured, or….

Nuphar came back. “Enough,” she said. “Don’t you take it so hard.” She looked at the people on their benches and then back at us. “I know they are talking to each other,” she said quietly, “but I can assure you, they are alright, on the whole.” She shrugged. “You know how that is; after such a long time, discipline becomes loose. Even among librarians.” She gestured towards the other end of the hall. “There are some more things I have to show you; we shouldn’t waste time.”

Shir looked around him. “I thought we were in a time-bubble.”

Nuphar rolled her eyes. “Time is not passing outside. In here, it does. I’m getting old while you stand there staring at some people making a little noise in a library.”

She was right. Humans do get older. Shir started to smile, and his smile infected me, and then we were both giggling uncontrollably. A room full of Humans who grew old in a perfectly natural way.

Nuphar frowned and put a finger to her lips. “Silence!” She said. “This is a library, after all.”

We made the effort and fell silent. Holding each other’s hands, we crossed the room, not daring to stare at anyone for any length of time. I photographed whatever I could and filed it for future viewing. I was still afraid to scan these people, but the smell of all these crowded bodies—sweat, soap, and some perfume—was very clear. No hologram could mimic reality so accurately.

Nuphar never stopped chattering since the moment we’d left the great hall. She led us to the places where they grew their food. She explained about caloric calculations and birth control, and I recorded everything she said because I knew I wouldn’t be able to register all of it in real time. Shir’s hand became drier as we went along. He was even able to talk to Nuphar from time to time, and get some necessary information out of her in those rare moments that she stopped to take a breath.

“Normally there are people who are supposed to prepare everything we need to scan and document,” Nuphar sighed. “I don’t understand why it never happens the way we ask. It is for the greater good, after all.” She sighed again. “So I’ll need from you a representational list of extant cultures,” said Nuphar as we walked past a display of jugs in various sizes, from a few fingers’ width to several meters, “and references to mapped areas. We can refer you to locations that used to be important once, for us to document the changes that have taken place there.”

Shir cleared his throat loudly, to stop Nuphar’s flow of words. “When have you last visited the outside?” He asked.

Nuphar stopped and scratched her head. “Three… no, two hundred and seventy years ago, external time.”

Shir and I exchanged looks. I turned my eyes back to Nuphar. “There’s been a lot of changes since,” I said.

Nuphar raised her hands. “But of course. It has been two hundred and seventy years. Civilizations rise, civilizations fall. It’s fascinating!”

“Yes.” Shir paused for a while. “Fascinating,” he repeated quietly.

Nuphar smiled. “I knew you’d like it!” She turned back and kept walking, pulling Shir and me behind her. “I’ll give you the full tour later. First it’s important that I get you to the Information Center, make reader cards for you and all that red tape.” She stopped, adjusted her hair, and turned to face us. “We’ve been able to create a complete reconstruction of all influential civilizations, so that all future scholars will be able to predict the course of events or learn more about the past,” she said, spreading her hands as if to embrace the entire library. “And you will be the first ones in two hundred and seventy years who’ll get to see this!” She raised a finger. “But first things first. Reader cards.”

She opened another door that led to a small room lit by spheres hovering near the ceiling. It contained one desk and three chairs. Nuphar sat at the desk, raised her hands in the air, and a keyboard materialized in front of her.

Shir and I exchanged looks and sat down in the chairs facing her.

“I programmed this keyboard,” she smiled at us, “based on old blueprints.”

She typed our names and titles on the holokeyboard, then raised her head. “We must plan our expeditions. Even if your world is in war, there are always historians who want to get to the Library, and we’re extraterritorial, independent of any nation or period of time.” She was frowning and licking her lips as she typed.

Shir leaned forward and laid his hand on the keyboard. Nuphar looked up at us. “Don’t do that,” she said, frowning even more.

Shir cleared his throat. “We have something… There’s something you should know.” He looked at me furtively.

I knew what he wanted me to do. I was senior, so I had to take the lead. I took a deep breath. There was an oath. A short one. We’d recorded it dozens of years ago. I hadn’t dared look at it since. “Can we connect with your screen system?” I pointed at her desk. “Something small, we don’t need an entire hall.”

Nuphar looked at Shir, and again at me. “Is it important?”

I nodded.

She frowned. “Well, we’ll return to your reader cards momentarily.” She typed, and connection instructions floated in my vision.

Shir laid a hand on my shoulder and squeezed it slightly by way of encouragement. I laid my hand on the desktop and made contact with the central computer. It was old software, but I managed to fit one of the protocols to my own software and broadcast.

An old me, thirty-four years of age, in tattered uniform, with blood stains on my face, looked straight at Nuphar. Nuphar looked at me, and returned her eyes to the figure that used to be me. I activated the simulation.

“I, Romi Potashnik, being of sound mind, do hereby put my consciousness and my body in the hands of the Supreme Generator,” said my projected self and took a deep breath. It wiped its eyes and added: “We shall never stop, we shall never cease, we shall never desist.”

The simulation ended. Shir put his hand beside mine and his oh-so-young image appeared above the desk. “I, Shir Ben-Yair, being of sound mind, do hereby put my consciousness and my body in the hands of the Supreme Generator. We shall never stop, we shall never cease, we shall never desist.” He saluted, and the image froze.

Nuphar looked at us. “Is this for the record?”

“No.” Shir gave Nuphar a direct look, capturing her eyes. “This was recorded one hundred nine years, four months, ten days, and three hours ago.”

Nuphar looked like she was about to smile, but her smile vanished before it could reach her lips.

“This is my last recording as a Human Being,” I said, and Nuphar shifted her glance to me. “I don’t know how many times I’ve been reconstructed since.”

“You aren’t….” Nuphar’s eyes moved back to Shir. “Both of you…?” She bit her lip and shook her head. “No, of course you aren’t,” she whispered. “Your facial expressions, your gait, the way you understand each other much too well.” Now she directed her glance at me. “Are you telepathic? Do you have a way of broadcasting your thoughts to each other?”

I opened my mouth to reply, but Shir was faster: “No.” He loosened his clenched fist. “We can broadcast subvocally, but that’s not possible in here.”

Nuphar’s giggle was a brief one. “All frequencies are blocked in here; we don’t want to disturb our readers,” she said.

We smiled in reply. This seemed like the correct response. Nuphar’s smile froze and disappeared.

“But you do look human. Our scans identified you as human beings.” She closed her eyes. “Metallic skeleton and human skin?”

“Of course. All over our bodies.” I cleared my throat. “Otherwise we couldn’t have penetrated space-warp fields.”

“Of course not,” she repeated. Nuphar opened her eyes and looked at me. “Explain. Now.” She spread her fingers, and the keyboard rematerialized underneath her hands.

“It would be faster if we downloaded all our knowledge directly into…” began Shir, but he fell quiet as Nuphar turned her eyes to glare at him.

“Listen, kid.” She straightened her back. “I am a Librarian, a sixth-generation Librarian. I’ve been doing this since before you were born. Or created. Or assembled in a lab.”

“Grown in culture,” said Shir.

Nuphar raised her hand. “I couldn’t care less. I’ve been doing this many more years than you can imagine, so don’t you tell me how to prepare information for cataloging. We’ll download everything to the Library’s memory, of course. But first I want your story in general outline, so we can determine how to start processing the new information by subject headers.”

Now she looked at me. “Proceed, for future generations.”

I wanted to tell her that there won’t be any future generations, at least not on Earth, but Shir made a coughing noise, and I started telling her. About the invasion, about our inability to prevent the aliens’ taking over our planet, about lost technologies, about the relentless slaughter. About the moment we found out that what they really wanted was the Moon, and that they came to Earth just to rid it of vermin that might have interfered with their designs. About the deal that sealed the fate of all the members of the Silence Unit. I did leave out the sense of loss, the physical pain that came with each explosion, and the mental anguish when memories started flowing to newly activated backups. As well as the need to go on functioning even though everything we were meant to defend was gone.

Space-warp fields know how to seal themselves against anything mechanical and protect whatever they surround from external detonations. But they are sensitive to living matter and can recognize intelligence. Our combination of living tissue and intelligence can confuse them long enough for us to detonate the charges hidden inside us. The first invaders got the Moon, and Humankind remained on Earth to protect it from repeated invasions by other aliens who coveted exactly the same resources.

“But humankind….” Nuphar did not complete this sentence. She looked at Shir, at me, back at him. “But why? Whatever for? If there are no more human beings….”

“Because this is our destiny,” I replied. “We need to defend Earth.”

“The Prime Directive says, defend Earth for Humankind,” added Shir.

“But there is no humankind anymore,” said Nuphar again, tearfully. “No more human beings. Whatever for… why…?” She raised her hands from the keyboard and buried her face in them. Her head remained between her palms, her hair hid her face from us. Her shoulders were trembling.

Shir raised his eyebrows and tilted his head in her direction. I nodded. We are not capable of genuine compassion.

Nuphar sighed and raised her head. Her eyes were red. I made a note to add this item to the programming of my next backup. She sniffled, put her hands on the desk, and the keyboard reappeared beneath her hands. “Go on,” she said. “Dates. Locations. Major battles. How many invasions there were. Go on.”

We didn’t reply. Nuphar raised her voice. “Come on, robots, start talking.”

I cleared my throat.

“And don’t make this noise.” Nuphar straightened up. “You don’t have to breathe. You’re just a machine in a humanlike bag.”

“But we do breathe,’ said Shir. Despite his stiffened body, his voice was calm. “We have pain fibers. We feel and behave like Human Beings.”

“But you are not human beings,” Nuphar raised her voice again. “You’re just… just…” Her voice broke. She snuffled again. And again. But this time she didn’t lower her head or shift her glance. I looked at her.

“If we weren’t here, you’d have had nowhere to come back to,” I said.

“We’re not coming back,” Nuphar interrupted me. She wiped her nose. “There’s nowhere to come back to. We’ll seal the Library and move on, like always, and stop again in three hundred years to see if anything may have changed.”

“Nothing will have changed.” Shir sat very straight. “We’ll go on exploding, and when you come back you’ll find Earth still…”

“Full of machines,” Nuphar completed his sentence for him, and there was a sting in her voice. She glared at me. “Do you wish to make a protest also?”

I nodded.

“So come on. Proceed.” Nuphar spread her fingers over the keyboard.

“I just think,” I said quietly, “that this decision is not up to you.”

She did not answer. She just looked at me.

“There are more than two thousand Human Beings in here. As you told us yourself. You explained that you live in an organized anarchy. The decision whether to stop, move on, or come out must be made by all. Otherwise you’ll be trampling all over their rights.”

Nuphar continued to stare at me. I returned her gaze. My internal programming said that after ten seconds I must blink, and after thirty seconds I must lower my eyes. These intervals were set by Romi Potashnik when she created the very first backup.

After half a minute, I lowered my eyes. I waited. The room was silent.

Nuphar sighed. “Okay,” she said finally. I raised my head. She removed her fingers from the keyboard.

“I’m going to call a general meeting.” She bit her lower lip. “And you will not interfere.” She hesitated for a moment. “This is an order, hear?”

We nodded. She could not change our programming, but we knew we’d better not point out her mistake. Romi and Shir had programmed us, inputting the spectrum of permitted responses to Humans and specifying the chain of command. They had not known that Humankind was going to be wiped out in its entirety three hours after they completed their programming and that these reactions would become redundant, since there would not be any Humans to obey.

The meeting hall was crowded and noisy. I was unable to figure out the rules by which this was organized. Some shouted, some stood up on the desks and stomped their feet, some sat by and only made comments. Nuphar did all of the above, sometimes standing on a desk, sometimes stomping her feet, sometimes heckling speakers, sometimes doing all at the same time. Nobody ran the discussion or controlled it.

We sat at the side of the room, ignored by all, having done our job. I was worn out and couldn’t follow the discussion anymore. My internal counter said it was more than twelve hours since we had entered the sphere. I needed food and sleep. Shir, on the other hand, looked livelier. His programming said that the later the hour the more alert he will be, except for those five hours and twenty minutes he spent restlessly turning over in his bed each night.

Shir turned to me. “They’re about to wrap it up,” he said.

I raised my eyebrows.

“Noise is abating.” He pointed at my head. “You really should upgrade your decibel counter.”

“Then it’s decided.” Nuphar’s voice got louder, and everybody shut up. “We stay here. We’ll cut short the next waiting period, and in the meanwhile we’ll see whether we can create weapons or some means of defense for the Silence Unit.”

There were scattered cheers and a few clapped their hands, especially the ones who stood on their desks. Nuphar turned to us. She was all sweaty and her face was flushed. “You can go back home now.” She smiled, but this time the corners of her eyes did not move when she stretched her lips sideways. “We thank you for everything.”

“We are not going back home.” Shir’s voice was quiet, in comparison with the hubbub that surrounded us just a few moments before.

“So go back to your pods,” said Nuphar, her foot drumming on the top of the desk where she stood. “What’s important is that you get out of here.”

Shir spread his hands. “We do have homes. We live in a way designed to make the Superiors believe Earth is still populated.” He added, pointing at me, “Romi has a live-in partner.”

Who had remained in bed and asked me to take care. This was my only recollection of her. I never knew if Romi kept all other memories of Yonit to herself deliberately, or maybe this was all she had managed to upload to her backup. She didn’t even create Yonit. I created her, from the limbless body that waited for my first backup to come back home.

“Excellent.” Nuphar folded her arms on her chest. “Then go back home.”

I stood up, and Shir stood behind me. “We can’t go back home. We must destroy the vestibule.”

Noise exploded in the room. Shir made a face. “That’s why I don’t upgrade my decibel counter,” I whispered in his ear. He only nodded.

Nuphar raised her hands. “Silence!” she shouted. After her third attempt, the room grew a little quieter. She put her hands on her hips. “What do you mean, destroy the vestibule? The vestibule connects us with this Earth of yours. If you ever want to see humans again….”

I shook my head. “That’s too dangerous. We must defend Humankind.”

“Which means you,” Shir completed my sentence for me, gesturing at the room. “If anyone could penetrate the vestibule, they would be able to destroy the lot of you.”

Nuphar straightened up. “Only humans can….” she began, but then fell silent. Her face grew pale.

“It won’t matter at all,” shouted a voice from the crowd. I turned to where it came from. The source was a man with a white beard, wearing a purple robe and a skirt. He stood up, straightened his robe, and addressed me. “This is what you’re saying, isn’t it? That after enough information-gathering stops, they will have figured out how to breach the vestibule and kill us all.”

“Why should they?” Nuphar raised both her hands and her voice. “It makes no sense. Why should they attack us at all?”

“Because you are an invading species.” Shir stepped forwards, swinging his glare all over the room. “You might decide you’re interested in the Moon. Or Venus. Or Uranus.”

I snorted. “Nobody’s interested in Uranus. Miranda, if anything.”

“We are not an invading species!” cried Nuphar. “We are human beings. This planet belongs to us!” Shouts of agreement from all around her. She folded her hands. “I refuse to surrender without trying. We shall fight. We shall defend ourselves.”

“We shall defend you,” said Shir. “This is what we’re here for.”

An older woman stood up, wearing a golden crown and holding a scepter in her hand. “If you destroy the vestibule, we’ll never be able to come back,” she said. “Our Mission will have become pointless.” She climbed on her chair and pointed her scepter at us. “You will have destroyed humankind.” The room thundered again.

Shir and I exchanged glances. He shrugged. It was no use talking to them. Anyway, once we’d be out of here we’d decide for ourselves what to do. Our programming said, defend Humankind at all costs.

We sat back. Nuphar climbed down from her desk. She came to us, sighed, pulled up a chair, and sat down in silence.

The white-bearded man spoke louder now. “They want to bury us here.” He raised his hands. “They want us to remain in this Library for good.”

Waves of discussion swept the room like a thunderstorm, splitting and rejoining again. Someone offered to give shelter in the Library to all of our kind before the destruction of the vestibule, as a reward for saving Earth, and was immediately shouted down in protest: the Library was for Humans only, and we were most definitely non-Humans. A voice cried out that by the same token they could invite the aliens in. Shir cringed where he sat. I laid a hand on his knee in encouragement. He laid his hand on mine.

Nuphar grew rigid suddenly and looked at me. “How did the aliens discover the space-warp field?”

I shrugged. “We don’t communicate with the Superiors about anything beyond immediate defensive measures.”

She moved her eyes to Shir. “And all these invading species, are they the same kind of aliens?” she asked.

Shir shook his head. “The data systems passed on to us by the Superiors indicate different biologies, with no evolutionary connection.”

Nuphar’s face blanched. “And they all started arriving during the past two hundred years, more or less?”

I nodded.

“And you’ve never asked why? How come they all arrive at the same time to the same place?” She sighed. “Whatever happened to curiosity? Your bosses didn’t program you for it?”

Shir straightened his back. “Curiosity, that’s what killed Humankind. This is what made those first people enter an alien spaceship rather than destroy it as soon as it was discovered.”

Nuphar turned her eyes from Shir to me and back again. She nodded, slightly, and stood up. She climbed onto the desk, raised her hands and cried out, “We’ve reached a decision.”

My throat constricted. I didn’t want to leave. There were Humans here. There were the smell, and the warmth, and a sense of Humanity. But I had to leave. Shir grasped my hand. I didn’t have to look at him in order to realize that he felt the same.

“The problem with robots,” Nuphar made a gesture in our general direction, “is that they only obey preset programming. They don’t ask why. They don’t know why aliens are attacking Earth. They don’t know why aliens are mining the Moon. They don’t even know how come so many aliens developed, at the same time, a space-warp that yields to human tissue.” She turned to us and spoke more softly. “They defend us without realizing that it was we who destroyed humankind.”

The room fell silent all at once.

Nuphar bit her lower lip. She was speaking only to us now. “A time-warp field works exactly like a space-warp field, except that instead of existing everywhere simultaneously, it exists everywhen simultaneously.” Her voice steadied a bit. “Last time we were here, we left clear instructions about the date and location of our return. Obviously, parts of those instructions must have leaked out, away from Earth.”

“No.” Shir got to his feet, dragging me with him.

“And that’s why the aliens are coming. They want to complement their space-warp fields with time-warp as well.” Nuphar smoothed her robe using both hands.

“But information travels at the speed of light.” I folded my hands on my chest. “Your instructions could have spread out for two hundred light-years at the most.”

Nuphar mimicked me, crossing her hands over her chest. “Our instructions were warped by the field, and the fields are in synch everywhere, everywhen.”

There was silence in the room. I heard the sharp, rugged breathing of the crowned woman. A roomful of people, all of whom comprehended this faster than I did.

“Once the Founding Fathers set up the original field, it warped space. Not just time.” Nuphar lowered her voice, as the room was completely quiet now. “I am so sorry.” She sniveled. “But what happened was that areas of space became warped all across the Universe, broadcasting our instructions further and further.”

“And they are coming here looking for more know-how?” I closed my eyes. More and more invasions? Forever?

“Just a moment!” Shir snapped his fingers. “If all fields are in synch….”

Nuphar nodded. “Destroying any one of them will suffice to destroy them all.”

“But we keep destroying them!” I nearly shouted.

Nuphar shook her head. “We are still here.” She moved a tuft of hair behind her ears. “So long as the original field is here, those fields can’t be destroyed.”

I was trembling.

Nuphar addressed the crowd. “Those aliens won’t stop, for as long as their warp fields work. They won’t stop trying to get the know-how we have here. We know how science can be used for destruction. It is our duty to make sure this won’t happen ever again.”

People were wiping their eyes. The crowned one buried her face in her hands. Nuphar looked at us. “Does Earth have the resources to support two thousand four hundred thirty-five human beings?”

We nodded as one.

Nuphar nodded in reply. She turned to address the crowd again. “I propose a declaration: Mission accomplished, immediate evacuation.” She fell quiet then.

There was a moment of alarming silence, then the white-robed man stood up. He said nothing. He just stood there, looking at Nuphar. The woman beside him stood up, and two children, too. One minute later the entire bloc they were with stood up, then the rest of the room.

Shir and I exchanged looks. He turned to Nuphar. “I don’t understand,” he said.

Nuphar came down from her desk and approached us. “Our Mission was to document human civilization, as much of it as possible.” She shrugged. “We’re the only humans left. The Library’s work is done.” She laid both her hands on Shir’s shoulders. “Thank you.”

She looked at me and said, “The original field surrounds the entire Library. Destroying it means destroying the Library.”

I was trembling. Again.

Nuphar smiled at me. “Not to worry, we too have backups. Everything is either scanned or hologrammed. We shall lose the original stuff, but paper, that’s a stupid way of saving information anyway.” She moved her eyes to Shir. “Perhaps we shall build a new Library outside?”

Shir smiled and nodded. As did I.

Emerging from the vestibule, we found the night as we’d left it. The soldiers were frozen in the same positions they were in when we’d entered the sphere. I sent out a stand-down order, and they shouldered their guns. I went to their leader. “We need an evacuation, but there will be no use of the Web. Your trucks still here?”

He nodded.

“Summon them.”

He frowned.

“Now,” I said, louder.

He saluted, and sent some troopers to bring in the trucks.

Shir entered the sphere and returned almost immediately, but the stubs on his chin were half a centimeter longer. “At long last, they’re ready.”

I came closer. “How much time passed inside?” I asked quietly.

Shir shook his head. “Don’t ask.”

I smiled. He smiled in reply. Things will be alright now. I knew they will. There will be Humans again on Earth, and this time we’ll be able to protect them as should be. We’ll destroy the Library’s field and use their know-how to improve our offensive tactics. For the first time since the original activation of my first backup, I felt the sensation Romi defined as “relief.” Shir had an identical smile on his lips.

People started coming out of the sphere. I saw the soldiers tense, but then their faces were flooded with emotions. One of them cried openly. The librarians came out with suitcases, backpacks, wheelbarrows, large spheres floating above them, jars on their heads. The soldiers escorted them to the trucks. I made sure no transmissions came out. We didn’t know for certain whether the Superiors were listening, but we didn’t want to take any chances.

There were more people than trucks. Some soldiers went out to get extra bubbles. Nuphar came out last; her cheeks were smeared with tears.

Shir approached her first. “You forgot your gear,” he said.

She shrugged, and wiped her nose.

I joined them. “Do you need any help?”

Nuphar snuffed again. “We have a problem,” she whispered. She cleared her throat and repeated, quietly, “We have a problem.”

I straightened my back.

“We have no explosives.” Nuphar wiped her eyes. “I thought we had, but when I came to the room where they were stored, I saw that they were not kept properly, and now they are useless.” She looked straight at me. “We have no way to destroy the fields.” She bit her lip and added, “The Library… is very large. It seems that you two won’t be enough.”

Shir patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry, Nuphar, we’ve done this any number of times.” He grinned. “We are Earth’s greatest experts on field demolition.”

Tension drained out of her shoulders all at once. “I didn’t know how to ask,” she said quietly.

I shook my head. “This is our destiny.” I laid a hand on her shoulder and tried to mimic the way she’d said it earlier, “Not to worry, we have backups.”

Nuphar smiled. “So… this is not a suicide mission?”

Shir pointed at his chest. “Human tissue and a mechanical body, that’s a stupid way of storing consciousness anyway.”

Nuphar let out a giggle. She handed me a chip. “This is the floor plan for the entire Library. To make sure you hit the right places.”

I accepted the chip. “You’d better go get your things. We’ll do it as soon as you come out.”

She nodded and went back to the vestibule.

I downloaded the data. Nuphar came back, wearing new clothes, with a bluish robe on her shoulders and a hat made out of some thin metallic stuff on her head, holding a three-legged suitcase and a floating balloon. “I’m ready,” she said.

I ran the data. The Library was humongous—bigger than any field we’ve ever tried to destroy. There must have been a solution hidden in there, but it eluded me. I stretched my hand to Shir. “I need help with the calculations.” I didn’t want to broadcast the pattern to him.

He raised his eyebrows, but then laid his hand on mine. We interfaced. He repeated my calculations. When the results came in, he clenched his fist and looked straight at me. He nodded. A small nod, imperceptible to others.

“What’s going on?” Nuphar moved her eyes between us.

I cleared my throat. “We need some help.”

“Sure. Whatever you’ll ask for.” Nuphar patted her hat.

“Not from you,” I said, trying not to sound disdainful. “From a few more of our backups.”

Nuphar raised her eyes to Shir. “Is the Library too large for the two of you?” she asked.

Shir raised one hand. “It’s okay, we can handle this. Not to worry,” he smiled. I sent out a short burst of information to my backups. Enough to wake them up, not enough to arouse suspicion, if the Superiors happened to be listening. I knew Shir was doing the same.

“You can get on one of these trucks.” Shir pointed at Nuphar’s suitcase. “Need help?”

Nuphar shook her head. “I’ll wait here. I know your backups will be the same as you two, but I want to see you off on your last journey.” She let out a small giggle. “Sounds awfully dramatic. How does it go, your phrase?”

“We shall never stop, we shall never cease, we shall never desist,” we said together, quietly.

Nuphar nodded and laid a hand on her suitcase, which stood there beside her. “It’s a good phrase.”

She waited, but we didn’t reply, and she turned her glance to the trucks.

I felt the quiver of my consciousness waking up in a darkened room. I remembered this sensation from the earlier times I’ve woken up there, although it was always accompanied, those times, by crushing pain and then nothingness. Beside me, Shir stopped breathing.

I close my eyes against the vertigo I felt as my backups woke up one by one. I looked through the eyes of one of me, to the right-hand side. The backup to my right looked back at me. I blinked once. I blinked back. I felt myself awakening all along the line, more and more, glancing right and left, but instead of seeing empty pods on my left-hand side I saw more copies of me, all waking up, blinking, looking from side to side, in a growing whirlpool of sensations. I waited until the last one of me looked to my right. On my right-hand side there was just the wall. All of me looked straight ahead, at Shir’s replicates.

My nerve center couldn’t handle that much data. I had to shut down unnecessary, memory-consuming activities. The line of Shirs woke up. My pod opened and I stepped forward, the first thud on the ground repeated by all my extant replicates.

The entire line of Shirs stepped out of their pods, too.

“It’s the first time I know how many of me there are,” we said in unison. “I’m glad you reached the same conclusion as mine.”

Shir Prime nodded, a uniform wave repeated along the line. “I was afraid we should wake up alone one day.”

In the dark square I reopened my eyes. “Come along.” I looked at the single Shir standing beside me.

“We’re coming.” He looked at me, expressionless. We invested too much of our processing capacity in the effort to keep all our bodies in synchronized motion. Nothing was left for routine maintenance activities.

I shut my eyes again to block unnecessary input. Got my backups out of our room and marched us up the stairs, into the cold air. Shir got his backups out, stepping beside me. We were twenty kilometers away from the sphere. We didn’t speak, didn’t send out needless messages. Ran along at a uniform pace, keeping quiet. My feet were injured by stones. I blocked out the sensation of pain. Shir ran beside me, keeping up.

Dawn came, and the world grew gray.

We arrived, together. I saw myself standing, eyes closed, beside an empty sphere. Textureless, colorless. A hole in the middle of existence. Beside me was Shir, his eyes closed too. Nuphar looked at me. Her face grew red.

“You are naked,” she said to the version of me standing beside her. My facial-expression-reading subroutine wasn’t working.

The I by the sphere opened my eyes, and control reverted to me.

“I know.” I straightened my uniform, a tweed jacket and a hijab. The line of my backups stood in front of me. “Enter,” I ordered. Shir opened his eyes, and his backups marched forward.

We sent each one of the backups the locations assigned to them. They moved into the sphere.

“How can you tell they’d found the right places?”

I looked at Nuphar, and all my backups still outside looked at her with me. “This is our Destiny,” we said, and kept on marching.

One of my backups saw how shaken Nuphar was. Another one noticed how she turned her eyes away. I didn’t bother to catalog those facts.

Nuphar kept silent, but she did turn to Shir after nine minutes and thirty-seven seconds: “How many backups do you have here?”

“Enough,” said all Shir backups as one.

She turned to me. “Are you sure you can hit everything?”

“Yes, we worked out our optimum dispersal.” I concentrated on assigning my backups to the appropriate locations. Some of me noticed that the bubble trucks started leaving the square. As more backups were swallowed by the sphere, my processing capacity increased.

After the last backup had entered the sphere behind me, I was able to assemble a full answer: “We’ve computed the necessary force, and we are sure we’ll be able to destroy the entire field.”

We turned our backs on her and moved into the sphere. We didn’t have communication inside, but I knew my backups were in place. There were red footprints on the floor wherever we went. The old man’s hologram stood frozen, pointing at the nonexistent stairway behind it.

“I’ve sent instructions in case we won’t succeed,” Shir broke the silence.

“Won’t succeed?” Nuphar had reentered the sphere, and now was looking around. “Is there a chance you won’t succeed?”

I hadn’t expected her to reenter. We had to get her out. My subroutine determined that Humans need to be calmed down in order to let us do our work properly. I shook my head. “Shir always worries too much,” I said, smiling at Nuphar.

“A lot of your backups went in.” Nuphar removed her flashy hat. “I came in to ask how many backups are left.”

I didn’t answer her. She turned to Shir. “How many backups of yours are left?” She raised her voice.

Shir looked at me.

Nuphar stamped her foot on the floor. “Answer me, you robots, how many backups of yours there are?”

“None,” Shir replied quietly. “We are the last ones.”

Nuphar straightened up. “Then call in someone else from your unit. I won’t allow you to destroy yourselves.” She waved her finger at me.

Shir smiled at her, looking more Human than ever, as far as I recalled. “We’re already inside. There’s no communication with the outside.”

“Then get out.” Nuphar waved her hand at the wall behind her. “Call somebody else. Do something.”

Shir just stood there, his hands down the sides of his body. “The Silence Unit was created after the first Superiors’ spaceship had swallowed everyone Romi and Shir knew. Everyone sent out to communicate with them and offer an exchange of information. They’d built us in order to save the rest of Humankind.”

“You’ve already told me all this.” Nuphar squeezed her hat, looking directly at me. “You have a partner. You can’t leave it alone.”

I held her shoulders. “We’ve been repulsing invasions for one hundred and ninety years. We’ve died and been reconstructed again and again for one hundred and ninety years. We’re tired.” I softened my voice. “There are other members of our unit; they’ll protect you. They have all our knowledge but none of the memories of pain.”

Shir came closer, looking into her eyes. “Please. This is our chance.”

He waited, but Nuphar never answered. She wiped her eyes and nodded. Shir leaned forward and hugged her. Nuphar’s shoulders were trembling. He stepped back. Tears ran down Nuphar’s cheeks. She turned to me. I hugged her too, allowing her to rest her head on my shoulder.

When I loosed my hug she wiped her eyes again. “I’ll never forget you.” She moved her hair back. “I’ll document everything.”

Shir smiles. “The Ninth Library of Alexandria. Established 15,534, in existence for four and a half seconds now.”

Nuphar nodded, turned back and moved away from us, out of the sphere.

We breathed in. We breathed out.

Shir smiled.

There was pain, and then there was nothingness.