Chapter 2
I pray and I mediate and still it’s no use. Why did you give me these thoughts that I cannot purge myself of? Why did you bestow this evil upon me? If I am a mere reflection of you, O, Light, then you must be just as cruel and vile as I am.
From the unabridged diaries of Vessel Iris, Volume Three
The Counsel of Nicaea’s hull dominated the view from Doshua Station.
The generation ship glided lazily along the length of the peripheral corridor, passing from one meteorite-proof glass segment to the next, panels shimmering like obsidian snake-skin.
From Iris’s vantage point, it looked as though it was the station that orbited the ship and not the other way around.
An illusion made all the more tempting by the colossal size of the vessel.
Craning his neck as far as it would go, he failed to see where the hull ended and space began.
Only when he found stretches of darkness devoid of all starlight did he know he was looking at the Nicaea.
Can you pull some stats on the ship? Iris asked VIFAI as he strode leisurely down the corridor.
And anything else you can pull from the feed on generation ships. I’d like to be prepared.
Once, these periphery corridors had been crowded with commuters, eager to gaze upon the vastness of space for the first time.
But just like with everything, people quickly grew bored with the sight of stars and distant galaxies.
And now Iris was alone, interrupted only by the occasional service staff watching media on their break.
As a Vessel, he had the clearances to speak with the Doshua AI directly, but then his own, less powerful one would be jealous that its services were neglected.
Here, away from the crowds and the perpetual hum of the station, Iris had the luxury of sparing the few extra minutes.
He allowed VIFAI to work at its own pace and for himself to study the spaceship in blissful silence.
Centuries before Iris was born, First Earth generation ships left their cradle in search of habitable worlds.
Pressured by rapidly collapsing ecosystems, those with the means looked to other planets for a second chance, leaving the majority of the population behind.
Archaeological records indicated each generation ship had been largely homogenous in religious makeup, suggested by preserved artifacts and digital records.
Fueled by relentless faith, the colonists had scattered across the cosmos in search of their own, personal, Edens.
It was an easy exercise not to pass judgment on those who ran.
If the world was burning around him and escape was right there, Iris would have done the same.
But fate had had a different ending in mind and the simultaneous development of gate travel rendered the same ships obsolete before a single one ever reached its destination.
There was no precise way to locate them, contact them, or to recover them mid-flight, so they were declared lost to the cosmos and committed to history books.
Over the past hundreds of years, several had popped up in distant corners of the galaxy.
They made their slow approach in silence, manned by nothing more than crumbling skeletons and ancient navigational systems. Every once in a while, the steady gravitational pull of a planet would be enough to place them in orbit until they were safely disposed of or dissected, their carcasses dragged off to various research institutes.
The Nicaea had already proven special. It was the first generation ship to exit gate space independently and the first to plant itself in stable orbit near a station, an object far too small to produce its own gravitational pull.
Iris nursed a timid hope that aboard, he would find many oddities, treasures from First Earth, and remnants of cultures long lost to the gravity wells of time.
Strange folklore and superstition, honed over years of complete isolation, usually adorned the corridors and living quarters of generation ships.
He quietly yearned for a space that someone had lived in, that someone had made a home.
The Northern Temple had been “home” for many years, yet his room, now vacant, could easily be occupied by a novice, as it had by him.
No one would notice the difference because there would be none.
The same sleeping mat would be rolled out by the wall, the same glow sphere would cast shadows when night came.
Not a single remnant of Iris would be in that space, no memory of him, a space forever borrowed and never his own.
With a faint vibration at Iris’s temple, VIFAI presented its compiled findings on the Nicaea across his field of vision.
Station AI would have completed the task in under a second; it had taken VIFAI over two minutes.
Still, Iris sensed a faint, yet noticeable flare of pride from his companion, and he wouldn’t dare extinguish that fragile emotion.
The Counsel of Nicaea had been in flight for more than a thousand years.
By a sheer miracle, it had avoided destruction by a meteor strike in its travels.
The ship originally left First Earth with a little over a thousand people, although it was impossible to predict what the numbers would resemble when Iris went aboard.
But a thousand souls! Generation ships never housed any surviving passengers, save for the one orbiting P’Ilani, and station AI had confirmed this with its preliminary scans moments after the Nicaea emerged from gate space.
But it would still take Iris weeks, if not months, to find and lay to rest over one thousand people.
One bare foot placed carefully ahead of the other, Iris made his way to the shuttle gates as he skimmed over the files and annotations VIFAI had produced.
Once there, he would board a single-person, unmanned craft, smaller than his room at the Northern Temple.
The shuttle would deliver him to one of the operational airlocks on the Nicaea, so the exciting part of his assignment could begin.
This part of his journey had been automated for his convenience: Iris had no piloting skills, nor any inclination to develop them, convinced that his neuroses would make him jumpy at the controls.
The shuttle doors were programmed to open after completing a retinal scan, the data for which had been uploaded before Iris ever set foot on the station.
Once aboard the Nicaea, he could bask in glorious solitude.
Maybe a station security official would accompany him once or twice, as they tended to do, until they grew bored with a Vessel’s routine and resigned to let Iris come and go as he pleased.
Long before he ever reached Doshua, Iris had decided he would spend all of his available time on the Nicaea, avoiding the forty-minute commute from the station to the ship.
He was hoping some of the hydroponic systems had survived, and he would be able to make his own food.
If not, he could always fast. It wouldn’t be his first nor his last. Any fast up to a week was doable, but if he continued working on the Nicaea for weeks on end, he would have to return to the station to replenish his provisions, as arduous a task as it would be.
Nothing quite like an automated shuttle to make you feel at ease, Iris thought cheerfully as the shuttle doors shut silently behind him.
The chances of an automated shuttle breaking down are very low, but never zero, VIFAI said with a playful tickle, an electrical nudge of laughter at Iris’s brain stem.
Taking a seat at the piloting console—purely ceremonial as he would have no ability to steer the shuttle—Iris unwound the mala from his wrist and ran the strand between his fingers. With each count, he uttered a mantra to accompany the bead.
“I am free from hatred and from anger. I am free from desire and craving. I am the empty Vessel of the cosmos, the mouthpiece of the Light.” The shuttle began to vibrate and hum as it initiated the launch sequence.
Space travel was relatively safe. Yet, being intimately aware of just how many people perished every year in its relative safety, Iris was inclined to err on the side of caution.
“Speak through me and only in virtue will I repeat your words. Speak through me so that I may be the balm for those needing relief. Command my body to move in your image, and I will be the guide to those lost and seeking you.” Iris’s top lip twitched in a small smirk.
Those words did not belong to him. They were reserved for the Beacons, whose sole responsibility was to travel and teach the word of the Starlit.
He had picked up the verses while scrubbing the gaps between the hallway tiles and eavesdropping on the Beacons’ prayer. He had a foul habit of doing that.
A faint sandalwood aroma wafted through the cramped shuttle cabin as Iris ran the beads through his fingers.
“My friend, rejoice, for there is no you, and there is no me. The Light is your flesh as it is starlight. The Light is these words as it is the blood in your veins. Rejoice that in the touch of a lover you know the touch of the Divine. Rejoice that in your last breath you learn what it is to be the cosmos.” Iris opened his eyes, not realizing he had closed them.
This was his favourite one, the five verses reserved only for the Vessels.
Five verses that he would say over every single passenger he found aboard the Nicaea as he returned them to the One Beginning.
These five verses were his and his alone.