ترجم النص التالي الي اللغة العربية I  woke  to  the  feeling  of  something  nudging  me.  M-Bot?  Yes,  he  was
poking me with a drone arm.
I  yawned,  stretching.  Curiously,  my  strange  experiences  the  previous night  were  perfectly  crisp  in  my  mind.  Talking  to  Jorgen,  feeling  his concern.  Then  overhearing  the  conversation  between  Winzik  and  the delvers.
Scud. Winzik was trying to make a deal with the delvers.
If he succeeded, the war would take a very, very bad turn.
“Spensa?”  M-Bot  said.  “You  have  been  asleep  for  ten  hours,  per  my internal chronometer. Chet just got up and left the cave. I woke you, as you requested.”
I sat up in the dim light, my back stiff from resting on stone.
M-Bot  hovered  closer.  “I,”  he  said,  “would  like  to  be  acknowledged.  It was exceptionally boring watching you two all night.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m sorry to make you keep watch like that, but I slept more soundly knowing you were there.”
“Well, to be honest, waiting isn’t as bad for me as it is for a human. I can change how quickly time seems to pass for me by speeding up or slowing down  my  processor.  I’m  going  to  go  take  a  cactus  break.  Let  me  know  if you need me to do anything else super boring.”
He floated off out of the cave, and I followed. Chet stood on some of the higher  rocks  of  the  hills  here,  looking  outward.  A  heroic  pose,  focused, determined.
I  climbed  up  beside  him  and  adopted  a  similar  pose,  staring  across  the expanse of flying chunks to the distant lightburst. Home of the delvers.
“Two  hundred  years,”  Chet  said.  “And  I’m  finally  going  to  do  it.  Walk the Path of Elders.”
“Why have you never tried?”
“At  first,  I  didn’t  know  about  it,”  he  said.  “After  that,  I  didn’t  really understand  what  it  was.  Now…”  He  glanced  at  me.  “I’ve  never  found  a place  I  was  afraid  to  travel,  Spensa  Nightshade.  I  always  thought  I’d  be willing  to  explore  everything  and  anything!  But  then  I  found  something inside me, inside my head, that I didn’t understand.”
“I felt kind of the same way.”
“It all worried me,” he said. “Chet Starfinder, afraid to explore his own mind…”  He  glanced  outward.  “I  can  make  a  picture  in  my  head  of  the entire  belt.  I  can  visualize  it  somehow,  know  my  way  to  every  fragment. That’s  how  it  manifests  for  me—other  than  speaking  mind  to  mind.  What about you?”
“I can do the speaking thing too, obviously,” I said. “And more, I seem to be  able  to  intercept  thoughts  that  others  send  out,  even  when  they  don’t want  me  to.  I  can  use  what  I  hear,  interpret  it,  use  it  in  battle  by  instinct. Plus, I can hyperjump—moving instantly from place to place.”
“So it is possible,” Chet said. “That sounds extremely useful.”
I grimaced. “Less so when you’re as untrained as I am. Regardless, being able to see the landscape around you? Like you have…sonar? That sounds pretty awesome.”
“It’s  useful  for  an  explorer,  I  must  admit!”  he  exclaimed,  then  pointed. “The fragment you need to reach is in that exact direction, but we’ll have to take a roundabout path, I’m afraid. We travel at the whims of the fragments, and can cross only when they bump against one another. I can see the route, fortunately. Eight fragments. We should be there in about a day’s time.” He looked at me and smiled widely. “Are you prepared, Spensa Nightshade, for an adventure?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then onward!” Chet said, then slid down the rock slope and landed on the ground in an expert maneuver.
I followed almost as skillfully.
“Wonderful!” he said as I landed.
“I’ve got some experience caving,” I explained.
He led us off then, M-Bot zooming along behind as we struck outward. Over the next little while, I got a fairly good picture of this place—at least on  the  small  scale.  The  fragments  were  of  different  sizes,  but  on  average took  around  two  hours  to  cross.  And  there  was  such  variety  to  them.  The first we traversed was covered in strange tall weeds with red tips. The next
was  dominated by towering rock formations rising high like sentinels. The third  had  enormous  waterfalls  that  tumbled  from  heights  and  then  flowed straight off the side of the fragment in some impossible continuous cycle.
The  travel  challenged  me  to  the  extent  of  my  physical  abilities.  On  the second fragment, we had to rappel down the sides of cliffs using the light- line. On the third we forded a river, then crawled through a tunnel behind a waterfall.  The  fourth  fragment  was  a  prairie  with  many  ravines  and  was populated by beasts that looked like rhinoceroses, only with two heads and fearsome  teeth.  It  was  touch-and-go  as  we  hid  behind  rocks  while  they wandered  past,  seeking  prey.  Chet  explained  they  didn’t  need  to  eat,  but were instinctually driven to hunt.
The next fragment was rocky and barren, with only a few small trees for plant life. We had to wait on the far side to meet up with the next one—and while we stood there, Chet suddenly rushed us beneath the cover of a small scraggly  tree  with  a  thankfully  thick  canopy.  Soon  starships  soared  past— pirates on the lookout for slaves to capture.
Chet  saw  me  watching  them  from  beneath  the  trees,  and  must  have noticed the hunger in my eyes.
“There is a pirate base a little beyond our first destination,” he explained. “If you are still so bold as to want to try, I believe we can acquire a starship there—through roguish means, naturally.”
I  grinned  at  his  phrasing,  and  then  we  scampered  out—risking  being spotted by the pirates—in order to catch the next fragment before it floated away.  We  skidded  down  the  slope  and  leapt  across  together,  reaching  a swampy fragment with decaying trees and soft ground.
A  real  swamp!  Places  like  I’d  imagined  from  childhood,  listening  to Gran-Gran’s  stories.  They  were  all  here,  each  landscape  in  microcosm, inviting me to explore. As we traveled, I began to feel an exhilaration—and something more, something deeper.
Confidence.
It  felt  like  it  had  been  forever.  I’d  spent  weeks  uncertain  of  myself  as  I infiltrated  the  Superiority,  trying  to  act  like  another  person,  lying  and sneaking.  I’d  been  terrified  that  my  personality  faults  would  cause  me  to fail the mission, and thereby doom my people.
It  was  so  satisfying  to  be  able  to  do  something  that  I  was  good  at.  I’d spent a decade exploring the caverns of Detritus, and had trained physically for the task. I could tell, from the way Chet spoke and acted, that he hadn’t
anticipated  my  expertise  in  this—and  he  seemed  to  find  it  thrilling  to  be guiding someone who could keep up with him.
It  made  me  feel  wonderful.  Like  I  could  accomplish  anything.  I  would walk  this  Path  of  Elders,  and  I  would  learn  the  secrets  of  the  delvers.  I’d bring this information back to my people, and together we would defeat the Superiority.
I could do it. I really could.
I loved that feeling.
“Spensa?” M-Bot asked as we moved around the perimeter of the swamp fragment—the footing was more solid here. “You appear more…alive than I’ve seen you recently.”
“I’m merely confident,” I said. “That we can do this.”
“I’m not,” he said. “It seems like so much. Chet says we’ll have to travel all the way inward to follow this Path. Pirates, the Superiority, the delvers… It’s a lot, Spensa.”
“Focus  on  what  we  can  accomplish  right  now,”  I  suggested.  “For  the moment, all we have to do is get across this swamp.”
“Well, that’s easy for me,” he said. “I can fly.”
“See?  One  step  at  a  time.  You  can  do  this.  I  can  do  this.  Whatever  it takes.”
He  nodded  by  wobbling  his  drone  up  and  down.  “Okay!”  he  said. “Whatever  it  takes.  My!  That  feels  good.  To  at  least  pretend  we’re  in control! I like it. Is this how you feel all the time?”
I wished that were true, but I didn’t contradict him as he zipped out over the swamp, looking down at…
“A mushroom!” he shouted, hovering above one growing in the bog. “A real mushroom, Spensa!”
I stopped to watch him buzz back and forth. Being in a drone suited him. There was an energy to his personality that came out as he flew around me in a circle.
Chet  walked  back  to  join  me  in  watching  M-Bot.  I  even  caught  him smiling.
“He’s really not dangerous,” I said to Chet.
“His  energy  is  a  little  contagious,”  he  admitted.  “We’re  almost  there— only two fragments to go. The portal you seek is in some ruins.”
“Ruins?” I asked. “Like from an old mining operation?”
“No,”  he  said.  “Though  we’ll  pass  something  like  that  on  the  next fragment. The ruins we’re hunting are older. Perhaps as old as this place.”
“Have  you  wondered  how  all  of  this  got  here?”  I  asked  him.  “This landscape, these fragments?”
“Indeed  I  have.  There  are  legends,  naturally.  People  think  hyperjump accidents are behind some of it, or even the delvers. But lore says that some of this was here before either delvers or cytonics.”
I helped M-Bot harvest a sample of his mushroom and store it inside his “specimen box,” which was the cavity in the cleaning drone where it once held  the  dust  it  vacuumed  up.  The  little  drone  hummed  happily  as  we started out again.
We reached a larger river flowing over the side of the swamp fragment. Chet  directed  us  inward  instead  of  trying  to  ford  it.  Though  the  current wasn’t  swift,  he  didn’t  like  the  idea  of  potentially  being  swept  off  amid uncertain footing.
We  continued  on,  leaping  from  one  firm  section  of  ground  to  another. After  a  half  hour  or  so  of  this,  Chet  halted  me  by  taking  my  arm.  He narrowed his eyes at the next section of land, then shook his head.
“False land,” he explained. “See how it ripples? Sinkhole underneath that patch. This way.” He led me through some still water, where the stench of the mud was terrible. Soon we reached another long section of dry land.
“Are there any landscapes you haven’t traveled?” I asked him, impressed by how easily he guided us.
“Oh,  I’m  sure  there’s  something  out  there  that  I  haven’t  seen,”  he  said. “But I have traveled a great deal! I don’t like staying in one place—you lose track of time in here that way. I prefer new sights, new experiences! I only stay with others when I’m out of reality ashes. Once I have a few, I’m off!”
After  a  little  more  hiking,  I  spotted  our  next  fragment:  the  penultimate one  before  reaching  our  destination.  This  one  turned  out  to  be  another desert, but with vast dunes as tall as buildings. I narrowed my eyes. Didn’t sand worms live in dunes like that? Or at least giant scorpions?
Before  we  could  cross  over,  however,  Chet  perked  up.  He  turned,  then pointed. There were more starships in the sky.
Used to this by now, I joined Chet in taking cover beneath a large tree
with crooked branches but a decent number of leaves. The tips drooped so low they trailed in the water, making ripples.
“Broadsider markings,” Chet whispered to me as we peeked through the canopy at the ships. “We’ve entered their territory.”
“Are the factions that different from one another?”
“Generally, no,” he said. “But the Broadsiders have a reputation for being more fair than the others. Then again, their leader is said to have once been in the Superiority security forces. I’ve kept my distance for that reason.”
There  were  four  ships  in  this  formation.  I  didn’t  recognize  the  specific designs,  but  they  were  definitely  military  grade.  As  we  watched,  they clashed  with  another  group  of  ships  that  darted  up  from  beneath  the fragment.
A  quick  firefight  ensued,  the  various  ships  flying  like  hawks  and  prey from one of the pictures of Old Earth, twisting around one another as they soared down past the fragment.
Seeing  them  fight  awakened  something  in  me.  I  missed  flying.  It  had been  only  a  few  days,  but  already  I  longed  to  feel  a  ship  around  me—its motion  an  extension  of  my  body  as  I  soared  around  obstacles  and  wove between enemies.
Being in the sky. Claiming the stars.
I missed it. Dearly.
“Soon,”  I  whispered  as  the  ships  vanished  from  sight,  chasing  one another beneath the fragments.
“We  should  probably  give  it  a  few  moments,”  Chet  said,  settling  on  a rock there under the tree. “In case they come back this direction.”
“That was another faction, right?” I asked. “Cannonade?”
“Your  eyes  are  keen!”  he  said.  “Before  long  you’ll  know  the  proper markings for all six.”
“Do they often fight one another?”
“Aggressively!” Chet said. “It’s a pity. They could be out exploring and adventuring, but I suppose I shouldn’t begrudge them a little sport. We all have our own ways of passing the time in here.”
Well, if we were going to wait this out, it seemed like a good opportunity to  arm  myself.  I’d  cursed  the  loss  of  my  rifle  several  times  already,  so  I selected a sturdy stick from those fallen around the tree and began stripping it.  Once  finished,  I  found  a  good  stone,  properly  oblong  with  a  narrow portion in the middle.
I tried to affix it to the stick, but my first effort failed because the vines I’d picked snapped.
“If I may, Miss Nightshade,” Chet said, unlacing his left boot. He pulled out a long shoelace, revealing another one still fastening his boot. “Always double-lace  your  boots  when  exploring!  You’d  be  surprised  how  often  an extra bit of string comes in handy. The uses are multitudinous!”
He showed me how to lash the stone in place—and then, surprised at my lack of knowledge, took out his other extra shoelace and proceeded to give me  a  short  lesson  on  different  knots  and  hitches.  I  realized,  with embarrassment, that I’d allowed having a light-line to make me complacent in this area.
I listened with devoted attention. It felt like such a practical thing to learn —the sort of thing that…well, that I imagined my father might have taught me. If things hadn’t gone so poorly.
Once we were done, I tucked away the shoelace—he’d told me to keep it to practice with—and picked up my club. I swung it a few times for good measure.
“A fine weapon,” Chet said, hands on hips. “What shall you name it?”
“Skullbreaker, of course,” I said.
“Excellent.”
“Though…I don’t know if sand worms have skulls,” I said. “Maybe we should sharpen a rock and make a spear, in case I get swallowed and need to kill it from the inside.”
“I doubt that will be requisite,” Chet said with a chuckle.
“Say  that  when  you’re  in  a  sand  worm’s  gullet  and  I’m  standing triumphantly on the corpse of mine, contemplating how to make a hat out of
its skin.”
“Ha!”  Chet  said.  “I  doubt  I’ve  ever  met  a  young  woman  quite  so… bloodthirsty.”
I shrugged. “It’s kind of an act. You know, bravado. But I do want to be able to defend myself against any beasts we encounter.”
“If we must do so, then we have failed,” Chet said. He held up a finger, adopting  a  straight-backed  lecture  pose.  “No  beast  attacks  a  person  unless that  person  has  made  a  mistake.  We  trespass  in  their  domain,  and  it  is incumbent upon us to take the utmost care to avoid accidents.”
“You don’t hunt?” I asked.
“Heavens,  no!”  Chet  said.  “Not  except  for  sustenance,  which  is unnecessary in here. I explore to see the wonders of the universe! Why, to leave  that  wilderness  so  desecrated…  No.  An  explorer  must  not  be  a destroyer.  He  must  be  a  preserver!  But  then,  I’m  rambling.  We  should continue. The pirates appear to have taken their squabbles elsewhere.”
We continued on, barely reaching the desert fragment and leaping across before  the  two  drifted  too  far  apart.  M-Bot  seemed  reluctant  to  leave  his mushroom hunt, but he followed us.
Chet’s comments about hunting and exploring left me intrigued—it was the  opposite  of  what  I’d  expected  from  someone  like  him.  The  way  he talked  felt  liberating.  Exploring,  traveling…he  could  do  that  and  test  his skills without needing to fight or kill. It was a new way of thinking. For me, the struggle to get better had always ultimately ended with the destruction of my enemies. Or at least the humiliation of those who had laughed at me.
I was changing though. It had begun on Starsight, as I met so many who were  technically  my  enemies—but  also  just  ordinary  people.  I  wanted  a way out of all of this now, more than I wanted to end the “Krell.” Was there a way we could stop this war without destroying them or them destroying us?
Chet  kept  us  to  the  valleys  between  the  dunes.  I  watched  the  sand carefully as we walked.
“Um…”  M-Bot  hovered  out  in  front  of  me.  “Spensa?  I  had  to  leave behind some of my information databases, but I kept the fauna surveys for all known worlds in the Superiority and…I don’t want to be a downer…”
“No sand worms?” I asked.
“Afraid not.”
“Scud,”  I said. “What about giant scorpions? Orion totally killed one of those on Old Earth, so they’ve got to be real.”
“There are several low-gravity planets with arthropod-like creatures that would probably fit that definition. Oooh… One has a poison stinger that, if it hits you, you grow fungus on your tongue. And in your blood. Basically, it kills you. But mushroom tongues!”
“Wow,” I said. “That really exists?”
“Spensa?” M-Bot said. “Are you…crying?”
“No,  of  course  not,”  I  said,  wiping  my  eye.  “It’s  just…I’m  glad something that awesome exists, you know? Like in the stories. Maybe when this is all done, we can visit that place. You think maybe I could train one up from a baby to let me ride it?”
Chet  chuckled  from  up  ahead,  leading  us  farther  into  the  desert—and  I allowed myself to grow excited. The next fragment would be the one with our destination, my chance—finally—to see what the delver had sent me to experience.
I  should  have  been  exhausted.  And  to  an  extent  I  was.  It  had  been  a difficult day of travel. It felt good though; there was something healthy and satisfying  about  being  this  type  of  worn  out.  It  was  odd  that  I  wasn’t hungry. And I’d been hiking all this way and was only mildly thirsty.
But…well,  I  was  walking  across  a  literal  flying  desert  and  had  passed infinite  waterfalls  that  were  fed  by  no  tributary.  I  doubted  lack  of  hunger would be the oddest thing I experienced in here. I hurried up, joining Chet as we were forced to climb a dune—a difficult process, though he showed me how to do it at an angle, and while keeping somewhat solid footing by not walking in his footsteps.
“In snow,” he explained, “step where the person in front of you did. That will save energy. Sand dunes, however, settle. And so the person in front of you will disturb that, which actually makes it harder if you step right where they did.”
At the top, I picked out the proper fragment. “That one?” I asked. “The green one?”
“That’s it,” Chet said.
There was so much life on these. Plant life, at least. Even the desert had scrub  stubbornly  breaking  from  the  sand  and  growing  defiantly.  Was  this what it was like on most worlds? Plants just kind of grew, without anyone to cultivate them?
“Are you nervous?” I asked Chet. “About what we’ll find?”
He  thought  for  a  moment,  smoothing  his  mustache.  “I  feel…like  it’s
inevitable. I knew I’d make my way to the Path eventually. To the point that
when you mentioned it to me, I felt like I’d been drawn to you. Pulled onto
this course.”
“That…sounds kind of unnerving, honestly.” “My  apologies;  that  was  not  my  intent.”  He  glanced  toward  the  distant
lightburst. “Still, I worry about the delvers’ hand in this place. I never can
quite trust that my will is my own…”
“Do you know anything about them?”
“They’re  not  a  group  mind,”  Chet  said.  “People  get  that  wrong  about
them. The delvers are all separate beings—but they’re also identical. They
live  in  a  place  where  nothing  ever  changes,  and  where  time  doesn’t  exist.
They exist in one moment, in one place, indistinguishable—and terrified of
anything that isn’t exactly as they are.”
“Okay…” I said. “A lot of that doesn’t make sense to me, Chet. But I’ll try to pretend otherwise.”
“Thank you,” he replied. “All I know is that the not-making-sense part is why  individuals  like  you  can  hyperjump  through  the  nowhere!  Time  and space are irrelevant, and after slipping into the nowhere you can come out anywhere  else.  I  worry,  however.  Every  time  we  puncture  the  barrier between  the  nowhere  and  the  somewhere,  we  corrupt  the  nowhere  a  little. Like how you can’t walk through clean fresh snow without leaving tracks.”
“Do you think…there is snow in here somewhere?” I asked. “I’d like to see it sometime.”
“It  exists,  but  is  rare,”  he  said.  “Tell  me,  Miss  Nightshade.  Did  you actually live your entire life on that barren planet? How did you survive?”
I  shrugged.  “We  have  algae  vats  and  artificial  light  underground.  And there  is  some  life.  Rats  live  in  the  caverns,  eating  fungi  and  algae  that transfer heat into biological energy. It isn’t much, but we make it work.”
“You sound like an exceptionally courageous group,” Chet said. “It is my honor to travel with you—though I must admit I find your home a strange place to have a society!”
“Oh!” M-Bot said, flying up beside him. “It is a very strange place, with a fascinating mix of technological advancements and backward ignorance. They have spaceflight, but not automatic soap dispensers, for example. So you could say their culture has had its ups and downs.”
“It  indeed  sounds  interesting,  abomination,”  Chet  said.  “Come,  Miss Nightshade and companion. We should hurry—there is a point of interest on this fragment I would like to show you before we leave it, but we will need to rush. It wouldn’t do to miss the next fragment because we dallied!”
We continued on, Chet picking up our pace. A half hour later, we crested another  dune  and  I  got  a  better  glimpse  of  our  target  fragment.  It  was covered  with  shimmering  grass—it  looked  so  soft,  like  the  fur  of  a  good blanket—and idyllic streams that dropped off the side, sparkling like drops of sunlight. It looked like paradise as described in the stories. Green, alive —there were even butterflies.
However,  something  felt  odd  to  me.  Chet  had  rushed  us  to  get  here  in time, but that fragment appeared to be hours away. At the rim, Chet waved me along to the right. The dunes tapered off here, and in a few moments we found  what  he’d  wanted  to  show  me:  a  pit.  The  sand  had  blown  away, exposing brown rock—and a vast chunk had been dug out of the fragment, going  down  at  least  thirty  meters.  The  sides  were  tiered,  like  a  reverse pyramid, paths running along them in a spiral.
“A quarry,” I said. “For acclivity stone?”
“Precisely,”  Chet  said.  “This  one  is  ancient,  but  I  thought  you  might appreciate  seeing  an  example  of  a  quarry.  The  ones  the  Superiority  runs farther inward at Surehold are much more massive affairs, but it’s the same general principle.”
“Too  bad  they  didn’t  leave  any  acclivity  stone,”  I  said,  searching  the quarry. M-Bot zipped past me and went soaring down to look at the bottom. “Maybe  we  could  have  fashioned  some  kind  of  floating  device  for ourselves.”
Chet shook his head, smiling.
“What?” I said.
“They left plenty of acclivity stone, Miss Nightshade,” he said, gesturing. “What is it you think we’re standing upon?”
“Rock,” I said.
“Rock,”  he  said,  “that  floats  through  the  sky?  These  fragments  all  have acclivity  stone  in  them.  Unfortunately,  it  takes  refinement  and  energy  to make it work on a scale that’s usable, so I doubt we’ll be able to make any kind of device. Still, it is all right here.”
I blushed at the realization. Of course the fragments floated on acclivity stone.  It  made  perfect  sense,  now  that  I  thought  about  it.  I  guess  the  blue
coloring,  like the light glowing underneath M-Bot’s wings, came from the refinement process.
“Now,”  he  said,  “that  other  fragment.”  He  gazed  across  at  it,  then frowned. “It should be here any moment.”
“By  my  best  guess,”  M-Bot  said,  “judging  by  its  slow  movement,  our fragments won’t touch for ten hours.”
“Ten hours? Chet, why did you hurry us?”
“I…” He scratched at his head. “Ten hours, you say?”
“Yes,”  M-Bot  said.  “Though  I  have  set  my  internal  chronometer  to  the time used by Spensa’s people, which is patterned after one hour Earth time. The same as used by my old ship, and thus also—presumably—by you.”
Chet settled on a rock. “I apologize, Miss Nightshade. My sense of time is…not as reliable as it once was.”
I let the conversation die, but I was baffled. How could Chet have such a poor sense of time?
“Well,” Chet said. “Perhaps we should get some rest here, then attack the Path of Elders. Always best to hit a task fresh and awake! So that it can’t hit back, you see.”
I  smiled.  That  reminded  me  of  something  Kimmalyn  would  say.  But  I agreed with getting some rest. It had been a wonderful day, though a long one.
As  Chet  took  off  his  jacket  to  make  a  pillow,  I  checked  on  my  reality icon, finding it had shed three motes of silvery dust today. I proffered one to him  and  watched  carefully  so  I  could  study  the  hungry  way  he  eyed  my pouch.  Everything  about  traveling  with  him  had  been  a  joy—everything except that look.
I tucked away the pouch quickly. Chet took a little longer to put away his ash—instead staring at it for a time, glowing and twinkling in his palm.
“So, the Path of Elders,” I said to break the odd mood. “Is there anything we need to do to prepare for it?”
“Not  that  I  know  of,”  he  said.  “I  visited  this  first  stop  one  time,  but decided  not  to  go  into  the  cavern.  I  feel  embarrassed  to  admit  that,  after seeing your excitement.”
I  stared  out  at  the  garden  fragment.  Yeah,  it  was  moving  more  slowly than Nedd did at mess on an early morning shift. It would take a long time to get here. “It feels like the quests that happened in the old stories. That’s why I’m excited.”
“You put a lot of stock in those stories.” “My  grandmother  told  them  to  me  when  I  was  a  child.  They  kind  of
just…stuck.”
“I  find  that  admirable,”  Chet  said.  “But  I  warn  you  not  to  raise  your expectations too much. Life isn’t always like one of those stories.”
“I know,” I said, still staring over that beautiful field. “But…stories say something. About us, and about where we came from. They’re a reminder that we have a past, a history. And a future.”
When  I  was  growing  up,  Gran-Gran’s  stories  had  been  my  shield. Against  the  names  I  was  called,  against  the  things  people  said  about  my father.  Against  my  own  terror  that  all  those  things—particularly  the  ones about me—were true.
In  the  stories,  there  was  a  sense  of  justice.  Everything  had  a  purpose; every little bit meant something. I thought if those heroes and heroines from the stories could keep going forward into the darkness, so could I.
I  might  have  clung  to  them  a  little  too  tightly.  With  how  strange everything had been lately, perhaps I was seeking some kind of stability. Or some kind of guide…
“I can understand that,” Chet said. “It’s odd—this place has stolen from me who I was, but I still know things. I know what a burrito is, though I’ve never  eaten  one  in  here.  I  can  list  the  names  of  the  first  human  colony worlds.  And  I  remember…stories.  I  partially  decided  on  my  name  due  to the tales of the old hero Chet Cannister.”
“Oh, those are good,” I said. “But I like the older ones best. Heroes like Odysseus.”
“Or Hercules.”
“Yeah,” I said, slamming my fist into my other hand. “Or Satan.”
Chet blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Satan?” I said. “The hero?”
“The…hero.”
“Yeah,”  I  said.  “Gran-Gran  told  me  the  story.  Satan  got  thrown  into  a place of fire, but he was like, ‘Hey, everyone. It doesn’t matter, so long as we have each other. We can make this place as good as any paradise.’ Then he  volunteered  to  infiltrate  the  enemy’s  world  and  went  on  this  big  quest through the Abyss.”
“Now,  my  memory—as  I’ve  warned  you—isn’t  great,”  Chet  said.  “But that  sounds  like  the  old  poem  Paradise  Lost.  I…think  you  might  have
misinterpreted it.”
“What? Who do you think was the hero of that story?”
“Adam and Eve.”
“Those losers? They didn’t do anything but sit around! Everyone else had flaming swords and dramatic battles!”
Chet grinned. “Well, that’s one way to interpret it. And what do I know? I only know my own name because of the patch I found on my uniform.”
I  made  a  pillow  out  of  my  jacket.  As  I  did,  M-Bot  hovered  over  beside me. “Ummm…” he said.
“What?” I asked.
“…I think he might be correct about Paradise Lost.”
“Read it again,” I said. “You really expect me to believe that—in a story with people named Beelzebub and Moloch who live in Pandæmonium—the author wanted us to root for someone named Eve?”
Some things are obvious. Unless you’re a robot, I guess.
“Do you want me to do what I did last time?” the robot asked me more softly. “Just in case?”
I  nodded,  then  lay  back,  contemplating  the  day  we’d  had.  I  couldn’t remember  another  day  in  my  recent  life  that  had  been  so  thoroughly enjoyable.  That  made  me  feel  guilty  though.  Jorgen  and  the  others  were fighting  for  their  lives,  and  I  was  investigating  swamps  and  playing explorer?
I  would  have  to  stay  focused.  Tomorrow  we  started  the  Path  of  Elders, and hopefully I’d finally have some answers. Or at the very least I’d learn the right questions.