Unascended

Prologue

There was nothing. It might have been a few hours. It might have been years. She had no sense of time, no sense of self.

Nothing.

Floating in near-absolute zero space, trapped in a non-functioning replicator body, days might have passed. Or eons. There was nothing.

“Elizabeth.”

There was a voice, and in some dim part of her she knew that. She knew something. There was a voice, and it said her name.

There was no way she could answer. Frozen synapses and circuits could never respond. She could not even think an answer, not in any conventional way. She knew it was not possible.

She knew. Which should not be possible either. Thought should not be possible. Consciousness should not be possible. She should not hear a voice, or even dream that she heard one.

And at that the part of her that was still Elizabeth Weir leaped, a frail flame trembling in determination. “Who are you?”

There was a net, a golden net that twined around her. For a moment she saw it complete, gold strands formed into knots, each one different, each one tied by hand, “You are safe,” the voice said. It sounded like her mother, like a woman’s voice, but that couldn’t be.

“I am dead,” Elizabeth said.

“Not quite,” the voice said. “You cannot die and you cannot live, frozen in a replicator’s body.”

“Who are you?” she asked, and it felt like her voice strengthened with each word, that her mind strengthened with each thought, herself coming back to her as though her whole being was gathered in by the golden net.

“Ran,” she said, and Elizabeth saw her, a woman two thirds her height with long, raven black hair and pale skin mottled with all the colors of the sea. She could almost have been human except for her eyes, black and wide with no iris or pupil at all, simply dark lenses.

“This is not possible,” she said, for it seemed to her that the woman stood in front of her, and that Elizabeth had a body again, like her own had been when she died, with all its flaws and strengths. It was not possible for her even to imagine this.

The circuits necessary to produce such a delusion should be frozen inactive.

“It is,” Ran said, her voice timbreless. “Are you ready to leave?”

Elizabeth raised her chin. “To die?” Death would be a mercy, compared to eternal nothing. It would be an ending, or perhaps a beginning depending on whose beliefs about the universe were true.

“To live,” the woman said, almost tenderly. There was something vaguely familiar about her, about her long four fingered hands that drew the net in gently.

“Do I know you?” she asked.

“Your people worshipped me once,” the woman said, drawing in the net from infinite space, each strand glittering in her hands. “She who takes the souls of sailors lost at sea. Ran, the Queen of the Deeps. Are you ready to leave?”

“I can’t,” Elizabeth said. “If you thaw me, you will reactivate the nanites. We can’t afford that. Humanity can’t afford that.”

“I meant without your body,” Ran said gently. “There is one way out, Elizabeth. A way that has always been open to you.”

“Ascension.” She looked at her, feeling her brows furrow, and surely that was impossible. Surely she had no face, no body, though she felt it around her, felt her face change expressions. “Are you an Ancient?”

Ran did not smile, though her voice seemed amused. Perhaps those lips were never meant for smiling. “Do you think the Ancients are the only ones who ever learned to Ascend?”

“You’re not human…” There were pieces of a puzzle here, if she could put it together.

“Nor any other child of the Ancients,” Ran said. She held out one long, four fingered hand, and her voice was like the murmur of the sea. “Come, Elizabeth.”

She took a deep breath. “What do I need to do?”

“Take my hands,” she said. “And let go.”

And then there was something.