Tut explained the phantasms away as a kind of brain damage, a side effect of my recovery from the Xurak’s surgeries. They had modified my mind with their language and meanings, transforming me into something other. But the process was cut short. And while Tut tried to extract as much as he able, what had been done to me was frankly irreversible. The doctor’s explanation—hypothesis—was that these visions were sections of my brain miscommunicating with each other. Traumatized memories, misfiring neurons, and the tiny pockets of alien matter still swimming in my head, they all jumbled together into these lifelike hallucinations… or so went Tut’s rationale.

  In the beginning, I was terrified of them. One night, I awoke on a world where the ground was flesh and eyes peered up at me as I walked. I once entered a great hall of white crystal. It was lined with dissection tables, or perhaps the jagged needles were simply growing from their hosts. A morgue, a farm, a nursery, I thankfully did not remain there long enough to tell. I trembled beneath a nest of the Zizurac, their porous caverns under the subdimensions smelled of the sea. A thousand beady eyes watched from the ceiling, but not one moved from their perch above.

  I was never harmed in my visions, and this was both my relief and my great evidence that these apparitions were not real. And as soon as I believed they were nothing more than nightmares, I became more worried for where my real body was, presumably stumbling blind along the halls of the Aphelion.

  But this was not the case either. No invisible barriers impeded me. I walked up the slope of that midnight mountain as if I was really there. The mechanics of my visions remained an elusive mystery. As reality retreated and the phantasm took, I often did not close my eyes. And when I came back, neither did I find myself waking from unconsciousness. Usually, I was back where I started, standing as perplexed as ever. And when they did take me while I slept, I awoke back with open eyes, as if I had wakened in the dream and woke up again.

  I felt the dry soil of this alien world crunch under my feet, a barren horizon of night and mountain extended before me. It was desolate and empty. As I walked, I recalled how everyone on the Aphelion used to worry whether one of these visions should take me while I was on the job. Or perhaps doing something equally critical. But as the years progressed, not once did these phantasms strike somewhere important. Tut modified his original explanation and called it liminal relaxation, that as soon as my unconscious decompressed, the visions would strike.

  I think he was just desperate to medically diagnose something so unexplainable—he made up his logic backwards. He fit his ideas to the problem rather than accept his assumptions might’ve been wrong. Meanwhile, the suffering child gave up finding logic long ago. These unwelcome intrusions had become part of my world, and much like everything else, they only existed to torment me. It didn’t matter if the universe had to break its own laws to contrive a new cruelty—it would simply never relent.

  But in the end, I must report that neither Tut nor myself were correct in our views. It was, as with the problem of all scientific endeavor, that we grasp only the materials and not the reasons behind them. We tend to think gravity is only the curvature of spacetime and not also a lesson of inevitability.

  In the meantime, I had resolved to laugh back at these sights. The universe had been too vicious, too obsessive to be called indifferent, and so I made a joke of it. I was not its prisoner. For once, it was now mine. I plunged my hands into the cortex of a Tyran Class War Machine as it sat docked in its port. The metal exterminator of worlds was helpless to the young boy, as I ripped out its processor with my bare hands. I crushed the delicate silica and felt the bits fall through my fingers.

  I boredly skipped by Stroggodon Conversion Lines. I played with their wires while the surgeons blindly added more unwilling victims to their armies. I looked up, and I saw I was on the bottom of an abyssal sea. Strange white lights floated above, and in between them, I saw the silhouette of some alien leviathan. Its great eye fell upon me, and a maw opened so wide that it could swallow the Aphelion. And with breathless lungs, I jeered and made faces at it.

  The only place in the whole universe that could still strike fear in me were when my visions swept me back to the halls of the Xurak. I found myself walking down a corridor that was neither artery nor architecture, and looking out a viewport, I saw a planet of rolling black clouds, drifting in dark space. I saw great cities upon its surface and not a trace of life.

  The portum called with its whispers, and I ran away.

  …

  I wiped my brow of sweat as I neared the peak of the mountain, the highest point of the range. The air had a stale taste to it, and I found I was quickly exhausted of this already tired atmosphere. As far as I could tell, there was no vegetation on this world, no sign of life. And as I looked up to the sky, neither was there any sign of day. This planet’s moons were plates of pale light, artificial constructions pocked with craters and holes in their old age.

  I realized this meant two things. The first was that this world, for whatever reason, had been important enough to preserve without natural light. The second was that this place was so old it was beyond preserving.

  I climbed the last of the rocky slope, and there I saw the only trace of inhabited construction on the whole world. There was a terrace of laid bricks leading into some ruins of distant columns. Their purpose was forgotten, but I presumed they must’ve been part of some palace or temple. In the center, I saw a throne of heaped stone, with the skeleton of a giant resting upon it. Its ragged clothes flapped softly in the breeze, and next to this thing’s side, there was a man of iron guarding the corpse with a rusted sword. It raised the ragged blade in warning as I approached.

  For myself, I had long learned to tell the difference between automata and Nekomata, and I was surprised to see such a thing, especially one cast in a human image. The galaxy had long given up on artificial intelligence as even the most advanced constructs were too easily possessed by the Aberrants. Something in their fabricated minds naturally swayed them to the cause of the enemy, and time and again, the Aberrant Wars began with the machine children rising against their masters.

  But this robot was strange, unlike any of the diagrams Ingrish instructed me in. It was crowned with a cowl of chainmail, and it wore a blank mask—something I found amusing. Why should a robot with a fake face wear a mask? It wore ornate armor that was weathered beyond recognition in the passing of the ages. Its faded cape was now strands of cloth which made the sight all the more pitiable. But the thing did not move or stumble, standing resolute against the patient elements.

  I took my seat on the wide blocks and kicked my legs in the air. Resting my head on my hands, I watched the empty horizon with little interest as I waited for this vision to be over.

  Glancing back to the armor, which had not moved a step, I spoke. “I think I’ve done this a hundred times by now. You can put your sword down. You can’t hurt me… but I can hurt you.” I grinned wickedly.

  “If death has come for me, I would gladly take your challenge,” the suit of armor answered back. “I have no fear of the end.”

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  “You are not real. Why would you fear death?” I toyed with the idea as I turned back to the empty horizon. “You are just a figment of my imagination and nothing more. If I wasn’t forced to be here, you wouldn’t be worth my time.”

  “Pardon?” The armor rattled in surprise and disbelief. “You are my hallucination. I have anticipated my eventual madness for many thousands of years. I admit, I expected it to begin with preliminary malfunctions in my logic processors, gaps in my sensory logs. Perhaps I have been infested without my knowing. I did not think I would experience a vision so real without warning.”

  I glanced toward the armor’s direction. “I’m the vision?” I laughed. “You’re the delusion here. As soon as this is over, I go back to the Aphelion. I have a life, a home. I’m the only real thing on this world. You can let up the act.”

  The helmet of the armor tilted its head. “It does not matter to me how believable you think you are. You are a ghost talking of ghosts. It is entirely impossible for a human to be here, after all this time. According to my matrices, it is far more probable that I am going mad, and I am not moved by your attempt to convince me you are real. My creators are gone, and they are never coming back.” A hint of anger escaped its closed mouth.

  I stood up and cracked my neck. Walking towards the armor, it swiped at me with its sword, the empty blade passing harmlessly though. I raised my hand and slapped the helm, an awkward strike from my short height, but the shock of the blow staggered the armor. I was surprised it had stumbled so easily from the strike of a child just entering manhood. I did not know whether I was stronger here, or the suit of armor was so shocked by a real blow after all this time.

  “I told you. I am the only real thing here,” I smiled triumphantly.

  “On the contrary,” the suit of armor replied, recovering. “That my sword passed through harmlessly is my final proof. You are the apparition intruding upon my mind. Ghosts can touch those who they haunt. Meanwhile we of this world cannot harm them back. Which is more likely, that a young man of red eyes suddenly appeared on this barren planet with no spaceship, no means of transport? Or that my matrices have degraded after the long aeons, and you are the one who is not real?”

  I opened my mouth and stuttered in anger, frustrated that this automaton was somehow winning the argument.

  “Who do you think you are?” I asked, demanding a name to attach this farce.

  “I have no name. I am Ranon.”

  “That doesn’t make sense!” I yelled back.

  The suit seemed exhausted, as if it was being forced to explain something obvious to me. “I was made to incarnate the Holy Ones across the void. When they refused, and your ancestors turned to the Aberrants, they disposed of my kind. They murdered us, made us lifeless again so to grow life on a million worlds. I was once a Terraformer. Or, as your species called us, the Image-Bearers. We were made to carry your covenants through the galaxy.”

  I sighed, fed up with the sputtering nonsense of the robot. A new idea crossed my mind, however, and I realized I might still be able to win this little game.

  “If you were designed by my kind, that means you have to listen to me, is that correct?”

  The robot shifted. “To a human, yes. I do not have to listen to a sensory anomaly.”

  I threw up my hands and gestured around. “Are you going to take that chance? What if I am a real human? Run that through your logic processors. Are you going to risk disobeying me?”

  “I can only obey if your commands do not contradict my primary motives,” the robot answered, worried.

  I lifted my chin haughtily. “And what are your primary motives?”

  This time the automata did not answer. I wish I could’ve seen an expression, but there was nothing behind the robot’s crafted silver eyes. I knew I had him then.

  “If you have none,” I said slowly. “I shall give you a new directive. Kneel.”

  The robot silently lowered to a knee.

  Standing over him, my expression turned to a fiendish smile. “From now on, you serve only me. You will do whatever I say, no matter what. Is that understood, Ranon?”

  “Yes,” the robot answered flatly.

  I remembered some of the stories Ingrish read to me, of Kaal. It was once a land of Sentinels and Watchers, or perhaps in terms more recognizable to the galaxy, sword oaths and oath keepers. I imagine in the distant past, they would’ve had other words for these titles and stations. I speculate because as war progressed from laz-guns and missiles to swords and spears, so too did some worlds embrace the old ways. Kaal was one such world, and it is also particularly said that the Third Aberrant War, our finest hour, called to mind the most ancient history.

  In this, I imagine war is a flat circle. And so, if my mock ceremony was to be complete, I had to play the part.

  “Present your sword,” I ordered.

  The robot swiftly laid the ragged blade on his palms and raised it flatly to me. I took its heavy weight in both my hands and tapped the tip of the sword on both of the robots shoulders, just as my ancestors did when they anointed the Chevaliers to defend them against the Aberrants.

  “I name you Chevalier…” I paused, trying to come up with some clever phrase. “Crucis.” I finally settled on, not having anything better.

  It was a Xurak word, one of the many derisive insults they had for humanity. And with that, I tossed the sword aside, clattering on the bricks.

  “Go and pick it up.” I kicked the automata.

  The robot obeyed. It returned holding the sword, not the slightest bit angered. Wishing to provoke him further, I pointed at the skeleton of the giant, who I presumed to be his former master. “Go and bring me his head.”

  The robot walked to the throne and clambered upon the seat. Crucis rose to his full height and only then was he eye-level with the giant’s skull. Cutting the crumbling vertebrae with a slice of his sword, he seized the skull by plunging his fingers in the gaping eye-sockets. Carrying it back to me, he knelt and presented it with both hands.

  I picked it up, and inspected the pruned head. Though it was unmistakably human, the monstrous head was something to behold, some variant or subspecies which prided themselves on their physical might. I turned and kicked the skull with my foot. The head went over the edge and began tumbling down the slope of the mountain. It disappeared among some boulders far below.

  Returning to my plaything, I crossed my arms. “I’m king of this place now.”

  The robot remained emotionless.

  “Hit yourself,” I ordered.

  The robot’s gauntleted fist slammed into the cheek of his mask so hard that the metal cracked. The automata was thrown back by the weight of his own blow, and he staggered and fell. But a second later, he got back up, none the worse for wear.

  “Again.” I stomped my foot. And the robot did so, without the slightest hesitation. Without holding back, he hit himself, and I made him, again and again.

  “Again!” I yelled. And not a moment later, the automata was back on his feet, blankly staring at me.

  I realized comically I would grow more exhausted in my shouting than the robot would in his obedience. Even when I made the thing my slave, the robot seemed to win our every confrontation.

  “What would make you angry, Crucis?” I asked.

  The robot was quiet in his pondering. “I think you misunderstand because you are human. Your torments cannot ever anger me because there is no purpose within me to clash against. You tell me to injure myself, therefore I exist to injure myself. I was formerly a nameless guard, ensuring that Typhon would not come back to life, and now I am Chevalier Crucis. It makes no difference. I did not defect, and this is my reward.”

  It was at this moment a touch of pity entered me. Perhaps it was my imagination, and it must’ve been because the robot himself admitted he was empty, but I swore I saw a tiredness in the automata’s eyes. It was that same empty look that I often saw in the mirror, in the passing reflections of a hundred alien worlds. My heart swayed, and I fell quiet.

  I suppose in a way we were made for one another, two empty things circling each other on a dead world. I opened my mouth only to feel the ground shift beneath my feet. I realized that the dream was coming to a close. I wanted to converse further, but I found I did not know the question I wanted to ask.

  The robot stumbled, and by the tilt of his head, seemed to look quizzically beyond me, almost like he couldn’t believe what he saw. I sighed, knowing our encounter had come to an end.

  “Find me,” I ordered as the vision closed around me.

  The robot shot forward with his arm outstretched, shouting. “Wai—”

  And then he was gone, and I was once again back on the Aphelion. Pausing for a moment, I shook my head and chuckled. It was a ridiculous thing, asking an imaginary automaton to come follow me. I breathed easy, knowing that I wouldn’t have another dream for a while yet, and I went to go find my bed.