BGM: "I Hope I Become a Ghost" - The Deadly Syndrome
now I have become a ghost
Danny kicked the wall. He watched the cracks spread and fade. He sighed, and the sound came out like leaves drying and rustling in a heat wave. (He remembered:
Sam in a cloak and veil, simmering. And he couldn't look away.)
He shook himself out of the memory and blew a stray bang out of his face. That was a long, long time ago, long before the city he was in had even been an idea in his grandson's head.
(He couldn't have kids. Not because it was strictly impossible, but because the one biological kid he'd had had nearly killed her, and the child itself... no. Never again.
So they'd adopted, and his son was brilliant and his daughter was brilliant and the baby was adorable and precocious and they'd all been so happy.)
Danny felt the corner of his mouth turn up without his say-so. (Really more of a scar on his face that marked where it used to be. Centuries of not using his voice, not wanting to destroy the planet he'd been born on, had just kind of wiped it away.) He let the smile pass. There weren't all that many purely happy memories left by now.
He looked up. There was a bookcase on the ceiling, filled from top to bottom with:
Sam's spellbooks and ancient folios. Tucker's sci-fi paperbacks and novelizations and programming manuals, rewritten ten times over. Notebooks filled cover to cover with Jazz's loopy handwriting, and her old textbooks still bookmarked and color-coded and annotated to bursting.
Mom's science texts and essays he'd found impenetrable as a kid – he'd figured them out later, when he had time. Dad's much-read superhero comics with crumbs and spills discoloring their pages. Dani's atlases, dictionaries and encyclopedias and newspaper clippings from all over the world, spanning decades.
The only part of his bookshelf that was really his to start with was a copy of Carl Sagan's Cosmos, the spine cracked and bent from a thousand re-readings. The dust-jacket was long lost, probably used as scratch paper.
He knew that if he turned back the ninety-some degrees he needed to be back in line with Earth's gravitational pull, he could just walk over to his desk and find his old star charts and maps and all the gathered leaf-litter of a human life. Old receipts and chewed-up pencils and red-marked essays from school. He knew it was there, but it hadn't really mattered in a long while.
Danny spun on his axis so he could look through the floor, plaster and paint. Faded blue, like the sky. (The old sky, when it had still been safe to go outside and watch the stars rotate around Polaris.
Whatever.)
He frowned.
Danny rotated around until the scuffed fake-hardwood was the floor again and walked over to the old writing desk, hands stuffed in his pockets. (He couldn't remember if his suit had originally had pockets, but he wanted pockets now so there they were.)
He flicked out a thought and the top drawer slid open. He rifled through a stack of papers, scrawled over in his child self's hasty printed handwriting. He could see "e"s and "r"s fading into each other.
There. His notes from August 16th, 2002. ...wow, he was old.
...okay, so if it was already Gamma Cephei, it'd be around 3000 AD. CE. Whatever.
Danny flicked his eyes up, old habit showing through as his mind reached up and out past the layers of city-domes and satellites and accumulated space-junk. A lot of it could be salvaged and reused for parts or scrap, but there would always be more that was just too much trouble to do anything about. Too many travel routes to go through, too much risk of collision (any risk was too much risk, he knew that much). So there were islands of garbage in the skies just as there were islands of garbage in the seas, spinning and ever-growing.
And officially not his problem, damn it.
Okay... okay, there was Polaris. Wait, if it wasn't the pole star it'd just be α Ursae Minoris. Correct for altitude, check the angles – holy crap, how many centuries had he been stuck in here?!
Ugh.
(He'd locked himself away in his old room after Tucker died. His first, best friend had been the last to go despite his ridiculously unhealthy lifestyle.
Sam had died freeing him from a particularly nasty spell. It was the first time Danny had deliberately killed a human, but Freakshow had been a monster from the start.
His parents had died in their sleep, Mom at 62 and Dad three days later. Danny never told anyone else about the autopsy results, but Jazz found out anyway.
Jazz had lived to the ripe old age of 98. She'd been making a speech on the ethics of ecto-energy as a power source and had a stroke mid-sentence. Two minutes later, she was dead.
Valerie and Vlad had killed each other. Vlad's ghost was still wandering around somewhere, horrifically malevolent and so incoherent he could never leave the Ghost Zone without falling apart.
Ghosts made their own hells, each and every one.)
Danny shook free from the memories. It did no one any good to dwell on the past, especially not now.
There was a knock on the door, and it slid open. (Not swung. His room was still his room, but all the parts had been replaced twenty times or more; swinging doors were a recurring trend in architecture, but they weren't universal.)
He didn't bother turning or speaking. (He hadn't cared about passing for human since his granddaughter left the planet. There was no one left to fake it for.)
He still watched, though, even when he didn't bother moving or acknowledging his company. He had so few visitors. The last one had been a good fifteen years, seven months and twelve days ago. Give or take a few hours.
They were tall-ish, with that stretched-out look you got in colonists who spent their formative years in too-low gravity. No amount of genetic therapy could change that humans had were meant to live in conditions of one g with very little variation, and microgravity caused problems.
Blond hair – probably dyed, the overall gene pool ran to black eventually – and brown skin. Their face looked thin, but not in a starved way. Heavy white one-piece suit with armor panels.
(He recognized the basic design, since he'd worked on it. Mom and Valerie had tested it.
Why was he so nostalgic today?)
The visiting human said something.
Danny looked over his shoulder. He raised an eyebrow and pointed at his mouth – well, He wasn't really human-shaped anymore, but humanoid enough to pull off the basics of body language.
...hopefully a raised eyebrow still meant sarcasm. He wasn't sure what he'd do if human nature (or his nature) had changed so much he couldn't communicate anymore.
And crap, they were flinching away, huddled up against a wall under a personal ghost-shield (or whatever it was called now). Danny forced the chaotic spiking muddle of his emotions down and in, not wanting to break his first visitor in – how long? Great, he'd forgotten again.
He sighed and dropped to his knees, reaching out a hand. Palm up, fingers spread. Of course, for him that didn't mean he didn't have a weapon, but that went for anyone with access to magic anything.
They uncurled and let the shield flicker out of existence. (...huh. That was innate, not like Fenton tech. Times really had changed.)
He could see water – tears? – gleaming on their face. Clear wraparound goggles, hair tied back, and a mask over their mouth and nose that faded into the suit. Sensible. There was still air, since air pressure was just as necessary as gravity to keep his old stuff intact, but he'd stopped letting oxygen in here a long time ago. He didn't want his stuff to rot and fall apart like things normally did in ruins.
Danny carefully, carefully helped his visitor to their feet. Humans – all living things, really – were so fragile.
They were saying something else now, the pitch of their voice gone flat and the "s"s bitten off under fear. (Another language?) And again.
He just shook his head no, lifted his shoulders a bit and let them fall. Sorry, but I have no idea what you're saying.
The person went very very still, and suddenly their free hand shot up and viciously tugged at a stray bit of hair.
::Telepathy.::
Danny froze.
He knew from the sudden shift in color and the shifting lights crawling through the room that his human-looking skin had slipped, but he was a bit too busy freaking out to care. Since when can humans read minds without help?!
::Read minds, no. But you [something] loud, very loud. Confusing though.::
Okay, shut up. He glared at the wall over their shoulder. What do you want?
They flinched again. Yeah, it looked like oh-crap-I-got-caught guilt was still a thing. His old species hadn't changed that much.
::Help.::
(A flood of images, suddenly and indistinctly recalled:
Tucker after a flood wiped out all his electronics, Jazz in the aftermath of a final exams freakout, Sam at her grandmother's funeral, Valerie trying to hold her broken leg straight.
Wulf desperate, Amorpho confused, Clockwork enraged.
Dani, disappearing.
Vlad hanging off a precipice.)
He drifted closer.
They were shaking. ...eh, why not?
(A flood of images, streaked with hope and guilt:
A mega-city in a bubble. A building collapsing, people trapped and dying in thousands. A hole in the sky.
An offer.)
::You don't want to know why?::
I don't care.
Shock.
::I'm the nuclear option. I'm the absolute last resort. I can – and I have – ripped open and hollowed out worlds. If you're willing to take the responsibility of directing my power, you'll get it. I don't actually care why.::
Fear, terror verging on panic. Confusion.
He'd forgotten how to feel things so strongly.
Something of that must have come through, because-
Don't pity me, he sent, packaged with a year's worth of anger. (A very specific year near the end of a war that spanned dimensions. He'd been so tired, anger had been the only emotion he could rely on.
Even that had worn out, eventually.)
Save your pity for the people you can understand. I've been a weapon and an army and the specter of destruction for too long to be human again.
...stupid, stubborn kid.
And stop crying!
They shook their head.
He glared at them, the weight of centuries behind it.
And now they didn't even flinch.
He wanted to laugh. He couldn't, so he smirked and felt the corners of his eyes crinkle up. The lights had faded.
They stepped forward. ::Whatever you want-::
KID.
Shudder.
Never offer that to a ghost, any ghost, never mind one as old and sneaky as me. You have no idea what I might ask for.
::The world is dying anyway!::
The world's been dying since before I was born. Now tell me something I don't know.
I'm an astrography student.
He blinked, and the room's lighting flickered on and off. What?
::You told me to tell me something you didn't know.:: They made a flapping gesture with one arm. ::So, I told you something you couldn't have known.::
If this kid had been around when Tucker was alive, he'd have started in on his come-work-for-me-you'll-get-shiny-things recruitment spiel by now. Danny took the two steps he needed to get within arm's reach and, slowly, patted the kid on the arm.
You're a good kid. Or close enough. ...are you sure you want my power?
They nodded.
He tried not to let his relief show. He really was tired, but- ...one last thing.
Apprehension. ::What?::
What's the North Star?
Uncomprehending blink.
Pole star, whatever.
Their eyebrows drew together. ::That's it?::
That's it. Just answer that one question, and I'll help you.
They tapped at the air a few times. There was an odd twist in the air, and a HUD popped up behind the kid's goggles.
::Iota Cephei.::
...wow. The thought escaped him without his say-so.
Pleading. ::What?::
He was so old.
All right. He held out a hand. Let's shake on it.
Confusion.
Let me guess, handshakes aren't done anymore?
Head-shake no.
He shrugged. I didn't really need it.
(An image: red eyes, reflected.)
...brace yourself.
Danny flung his mind away and out of his body, leaving his power to anyone reckless enough to claim it.
Better hurry, he called out. Or whatever you came here for, it'll be gone forever!
It wouldn't be, not really. It'd just fade back into the Ghost Zone, and he'd be nothing but one of the uncountable trillions of forgotten ghosts.
The kid reached out-
(-I tripped and fell like a clumsy idiot, my hand landed smack on the big green button and there was light-)
He watched, not quite able to regret, as their eyes burned out. They grew back green.
::WHY?!::
He managed to project a bit of remembered smugness. Because you fell for it.
(That wasn't really why:
He'd promised, an eternity ago, not to kill himself. Not to let go just on the off-chance he might be able to see his loved ones again. And at the time, he'd meant it, but that had been an eternity ago.
He hadn't killed himself. He'd waited, hoping that like Dani he'd just fade away one day. Or that like Vlad, he'd eventually be killed thoroughly enough to make it stick. Instead, he'd just hung on, too damn stubborn to die. Too scared to let go unless he knew someone could take his place.
And then he'd had a visitor who actually came in, not just communicating through panels on the walls. And they really weren't just a power-grubbing maniac; he wasn't human enough to judge morals anyway but he could tell that they cared and that was the most important thing.
The appearance of humanity could hold for a long, long time but everything wore out eventually.)
Bye, kiddo.
::NO!::
He could feel their consciousness slipping away from the shock of the transformation, needing to just stop and let their brain rewire itself until they could fit in their body again.
::If you're going to just dump this on me, you can [cursing] stay around until I have half a clue what I'm doing!::
And if I just leave now, you'll – do what, exactly? How do you think you can stop me?
Pain.
The child fell. He tugged at gravity, just a bit, so they wouldn't hurt themselves when they hit the ground.
(An image:
A collection of colored pebbles – no, photographs – in a cubbyhole. Times changed, but grief was the same.)
...never mind. Too late for take-backs. The kid wouldn't really be human anymore, but they'd have power and he'd get to rest. Finally.
It wasn't anything close to the ending he'd wanted, way back when-
(A set of memories, falling like raindrops:
He was six years old, and when he grew up he was going be just like Mommy.
He was ten years old, and he was going to be an astronaut.
He was fourteen years old, and he was going to die.)
-but now the stars were close.
He let his memories spill up, up, away from the tumbling earth.