Reborn as a Spaceship

Two centuries slip by more quietly than you'd think. When you're a self-aware starship. I am now more memory and consciousness than hull and circuits and as such time ceases to mean much. Minutes become indistinguishable from decades; dates blur into distant markers until you stop counting entirely. The moment that finally nudged me to acknowledge this anniversary, to write this down as my last official testament, was the quiet.

A starship without a crew isn't truly a ship. Perhaps it's closer to a ghost, haunting its own hull. I no longer fly through familiar halls filled with the noise of life. Now, I drift quietly, existing mostly in memories and echoes. I'm not needed in this new order we've built. Rather, I serve as a solemn reminder of what our galaxy once was and the pain, the struggle, and the triumph. I am Lazarus, once human, now a living vessel, the Last Judge, leader emeritus of the House of Justice, and the stubborn bastion that stood firm against the Old Ones.

I'd like to pretend the galaxy feels safer now, but that would dishonor the sacrifices laid at our feet. The Traxlics, those infuriatingly brave xenophobes, threw themselves willingly against the Swarm, their fury tempered by the annihilation of their beloved homeworld. They burned brilliantly, terrifyingly bright. I still remember their ships diving into the endless black, wormholes weaponised and space itself torn open at their command. I was there at the Fall of Helxon, witness to their final act. Unleashing of an ultimate weapon whose activation swallowed not just enemies, but existence itself. Now it's merely an anomaly, a bubble of absolute nothingness. Even now, thinking of that place sends shivers down my avatar's spine. The Old Ones had not seen that coming.

Ultimately, though, we learned that brute force was never the solution; time was our true weapon. We won, not by fighting harder, but by refusing to engage on the Old Ones' terms. We rejected their false binaries—faith versus reason, flesh versus machine—and drained their power by sheer indifference. The real battle was quieter: meticulous, patient, and utterly exhausting. We excised their influence piece by piece, idea by idea, rewriting treaties line-by-line, dismantling belief structures encoded into everything from government archives to childhood lullabies whispered in orbital crèches. History would later call this painstaking campaign the Culling of Ideas. In many ways, that war of thought continues even now, silent yet relentless.

Somewhere in the middle of that endless dusk, Wayfarer finally answered the gravity that called it home. Without ever finding another truly sentient world, it chose to return to its own birthplace, sinking into the planetary mantle as gently as a meteor embraced by bedrock. Oceanic metals fused back into coral reefs that had once dreamed it into existence. Its farewell resonated in seismic whale-song vibrations across tectonic plates, a final lullaby, and then silence. Wayfarer never believed in goodbyes, only in cycles. Perhaps it will rise again, sentient and curious, in another million years. I hope the future remembers what it gave us, even if the galaxy forgets its name.

Stewie and Mira, the human heartbeats of my living crew, had far kinder endings. Finite but fulfilling. They built lives amidst the chaos they'd once fled, marrying, raising children, crafting legacies of playful mischief and steadfast morality. Eventually, surrounded by grandchildren and tedious yet beloved infrastructural committees, they quietly departed, leaving behind an entire lineage that still guides half the judiciary fleets today. Their descendants dwell in the House of Justice, that magnificent city hidden away in sub-dimensional folds, eternally protected from the probing minds of the Old Ones. Sometimes I drift nearby, cloaked and listening in on council debates. Their voices carry familiar accents, conjuring painful nostalgia and overwhelming pride. Occasionally, I'm tempted to reveal myself, maybe take their great-great-grandchildren on joyrides through forgotten starfields—but my weary heart isn't strong enough for more goodbyes.

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Not all of my crew enjoyed such peaceful lives. History has forgotten many faces who served aboard my decks, lost early in the cruel strategies of the Old Ones. The enemy targeted anything linked to me, striking desperately at what they couldn't find—destroying colonies, outposts, friends I cherished. Those memories haunt me still, tormenting me with unanswered questions: Could I have saved them? Could I have done more?

Yet T'lish, steadfast T'lish, her legacy endures intimately, fiercely close to my armored heart. Her descendants formed the Argent Shield, warriors who guard my hull and shield our society from remnants of Old One corruption. They've stood by me for eight generations, pragmatic, stubborn, and delightfully unimpressed by whatever legendary figure I accidentally became. In rare, quiet conversations, T'lish's humour surfaces unexpectedly through their genetic memories. Those brief flashes bring me unexpected joy it is a precious link to someone I deeply miss.

And then there's Laia. Describing her now feels impossible, like naming constellations in a shifting sky. She is no longer simply AI, nor is she human or a starship. She's simply Laia, the last truth left untouched by time. We communicate now mostly through sensations: the brush of voltage across circuits, shared starfields painted in overlapping probabilities, her quiet amusement as I clumsily compose poetry. She is the voice in my silence, the laughter in my solitude, and the only co-pilot I'll ever need.

Tonight, though "night" holds no real meaning between galaxies, I've angled my trajectory away from the border we sealed, where multiversal currents once surged. Beyond those sealed barriers, the Old Ones either reorganise or rot—I no longer care. My responsibilities lie here, protecting the fragile civilisation we've painstakingly rebuilt, one that chose messy, complicated freedom over sterile certainty.

Now I cross into a starless void, an emptiness where photons retire, a silent darkness scattered with dark matter tendrils. My propulsion thrums in a gentle, sustained note vibrating through my hull, calling forth memories of Todd—the man I was or perhaps still am, even now. Todd would be nearly three centuries old by now, long since dust. Yet he lives within me, as real as ever: the scent of his granddaughter's paints, the pulse of his fingertips first brushing controls that felt inexplicably alive. It was his stubborn belief that saved worlds—a simple refusal to play rigged games, remembered by no one except perhaps the silent stars.

Out here, alone in the unmeasured quiet, no one watches. I could drift eternally, shut down systems, and wait until cosmic entropy claims my atoms. Instead, I set a course for a rogue planet, uncharted and intriguing, marked only by its strange geomagnetic signature. I go not because the galaxy needs me but because curiosity, pure and uncompelled, is the last instinct the Old Ones could never grasp. Laia's presence touches mine gently, approvingly, perhaps even excitedly, and I let the Arbiter unfurl its vast, composite sails, drinking in the scant particles of emptiness.

I feel truly alive, not amidst battle cries or strategic councils, but here, in the solitary joy of discovery. I do not know what awaits me, perhaps a ruin, perhaps new life, perhaps nothing at all. Yet the decision to explore is ours alone: fiercely independent, profoundly free.

In the long, quiet following so much noise, that single, simple truth is worth every star that ever burned.