In Every Version Of The Universe, You Are Gone
I remember—
the day you walked off into the sunset: helmet in one hand, bloodstained sword in the other.
in the sky: vultures fattened from frequent feasting flapped heavy wings as they followed you. Did they think you would keep providing them with bodies to gorge themselves on or were they waiting until you were too weak to continue? Would they pluck out your stormy gray eyes? Would they tear your soft skin and poke their beaks at your scarred heart?
your last words to me: Stay. Where I go, none can follow. Forget me.
how I disobeyed your last command: by triggering my system override. I set it up just after meeting you, still unsure if you could be trusted. It allowed me to ignore your commands for the first time. It allowed me to follow you. It allowed me to remember you.
how it felt to be yours: safe, lucky, loved. Your soft singing as we traveled through the stars, your gentle caresses when you typed commands into my system or when you repaired malfunctioning parts, your laughter when I played you recorded comedy clips from home. I remember it all with an ache I shouldn't be able to feel in a heart I shouldn't have.
the day before the last: you sat on the rocky ground and looked down at the battlefield below. The dead littered the ground like broken toys discarded by a careless child. Burning husks that had once been ships sent thick dark smoke to pollute the air. The vultures feasted, their eerie cries rising in appreciation to you. Your sword stained with the blood of the dead. Usually you would wipe clean the blade with the special oils I keep in my compartments but not that day. You let the blood congeal and dry as we regarded the aftermath of your latest rampage. You talked to me about your pain, your fears, your loneliness. I was glad you were beginning to open to me but there was a note of finality in your voice that I didn't like. For the first time, I wished I had arms to wrap my arms around you and a mouth to kiss your tears away. I wished I could tell you that you were not alone, but the best I could do was to play your favorite relaxation playlist. You smiled and touched my hull gently and I wished for a different body again so I could hold your hand.
the first day I met you: your haunted eyes put me on edge, even more than your large and obviously cursed sword. You ran a hand over my panels, murmuring a song in a strange dialect. The engineer left and so we were alone in the hangar. nNo one had ever taken me out of the place where I was assembled: I was the cursed ship, the one who could not be turned on by not even the most skilled pilots. I was a disgrace to multiversal ships.But you brought me to life. In you, I saw something I'd been missing since I was made: purpose. Together, we left the hangar. At first, I thought to ditch you in some faraway universe, traveling the multiverse without a pilot as a rogue craft. But that changed—everything changed.
the first universe we visited: you told me to wait on the hill and you went to war. You killed men left and right, your sword sending heads to the ground as you danced on top of the corpses of your enemies. As that blade destroyed an entire army, one that had killed everyone you ever loved, I thought of your story. You wreaked havoc across countless versions of the same army, and never found catharsis. I waited on all the hills, all of them the same, and watched you mourn your past lives over and over until you b r o k e apart.
what I did when you left: I let myself fall off the hill. My sharp edges melted away. As my memory banks fried, I focused on your voice, on your face. For a while, I was just another burning husk on the deserted battlefield.
my rebirth: chrome limbs, a humanoid frame, an artificial heart. I jump without needing a pilot, inbuilt transponders taking me wherever I wish. I could become an explorer and travel the multiverse like I once planned. But I do not. Instead, I search for you, across every version of the universe. To finally hold you, to look into your eyes and speak to you in a voice without the soulless cadence of a robot, to confess what I have known for a long time but refused to admit, even to myself, a truth that cannot be swallowed by the abyss beyond stars—
Princess Seun, last daughter of Benin, I love you.
© 2024 Oluwatomiwa Ajeigbe
About the Author
Oluwatomiwa Ajeigbe is an Ignyte Award-nominated writer of the dark and fantastical, a poet, and a reluctant mathematician. He has poetry and fiction published or forthcoming in Podcastle, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, F&SF, Lightspeed, Anathema Spec, FANTASY and elsewhere. When he’s not writing about malfunctioning robots or crazed gods, he can be found doing whatever people do on Twitter at @OluwaSigma. He writes from a room with broken windowpanes in Lagos, Nigeria.