I touched the latches to my helmet, and I was so far gone I never heard the shrieking alarms. The pain was beyond imagining, and I had to end it. The tears froze in my eyes, sealing them shut, even before I pulled the helmet off and threw it away. I heard the splash of liquid pouring in.

When I had last died, in battle over Venus thirty years previously, I had fallen unconscious. Whenever a person dies, their awareness shuts out first. Mine didn't. I felt it, my consciousness slipping away, terrible visions invading my mind, but from the inside. Terror like I had never known filled me.

"No!" I screamed, pouring every bit of my being into extending my life for just another moment, just to keep my death at bay for that long.

Something happened. I'm not sure what. Perhaps the cold had invaded my brain and my consciousness reached superconductivity. All I know is that an hour later, I awakened on the surface, liquid nitrogen still clinging to my body-- that was no longer covered by my suit-- out on the ice somehow breathing oxygen that came from nowhere, recieving heat from nowhere, seeing with bright light that came from nowhere, at least not from the feeble sun.

I stood, and touched my face. My skin was warm. My vision was normal. I couldn't hear anything; there was no air to transmit sound. I just stood there, for about an hour, trying to puzzle it out.

Eventually I decided that I was somehow maintaining a bubble around myself, through the power of my own mind. As I contemplated it, sitting naked on a patch of frozen ammonia that should have turned my skin into solid ice in half a second, I pondered the possibilities of this power. What was I capable of? What could I do with these capabilities? What did the future hold for me?

As I thought of the future, I knew that it would be somewhere brighter and warmer, and I turned my eyes to the distant sun. Images filled my mind, glimpses of the future, faces, sensations, new worlds. I became confused. I could not tell what was my history and what was my future. The death of Mercury at the hands of the Cybrids, and weeping for my husband and child, was that a month ago? thirty years hence? a century ago? And the sky over an alien world, bright with nebulae and brilliant stars, when had I seen it before? Or was it something I would not see for decades?

Confusion, chaos, madness. In any case, I could not stay staring at Neptune in my birthday suit for much longer. Surely there was a limit to my power, and surely my fragile protection would soon collapse.

I looked for the shuttle but it was gone. I don't know if I even returned to the surface near it or if it had fallen through thin ice.

So I returned to the ship under my own power, materializing in my rather untidy state right on the bridge.

I could not explain myself, could not let a hint of my power reach the wrong hands. The consequences would be too dire. I wasn't even sure my own hands were the right ones, in fact, I doubted it. And I was right, too, considering what the first use of my power was.

I killed the bridge crew. I simply willed them away and they were gone. I forged some reports saying they were lost in battle with the Cybrids, but we never even encountered them. I told myself that their report would interest the Emperor, the last man I would trust with such abilities, but I was really just afraid for my own sake.

When I returned to Earth, I arranged my death in a duel. The Brotherhood had me revived, and I hoped that my new body would not carry the abilities I had aquired.

Unfortunately, the changes were stored within my brain itself. I spent months trying to find a way to undo them, but could find nothing. I feared what could happen if I made a mistake, if I got angry at someone and my powers spiked at the wrong time. I feared I might blow the Earth itself out of space, or the solar system itself. Zero-space has practically infinite energy, and anything was possible.

I would have destroyed myself utterly, flew myself into the sun or something, but the vision of the future sustained me. People would need me, and I would help thousands build a new world. Perhaps my visions were wrong, and they were just a trick of my subconscious survival instinct fighting my conscious mind. Perhaps I would really destroy a world. Perhaps I would kill a million innocents with a sweep of my hand. I did everything I could to reject my power, to dull it, to banish it from my being. For a time it worked, and for many years I was never able to consciously make use of it.

Indecision and fear filled my days. Eventually I got to Mercury, following my vision, desperately hoping it was the right one and not just wishful thinking. When the Cybrids struck, I almost, almost let myself go, almost reduced Mercury to a cinder (or more of one than it already is). But I held back, which is good, because I now know a release like that would have dissociated myself as well.

Finally I met Del, and seeing her face for the first time, I knew that my vision was a true one, at least parts of it. I had known her for thirty years, the sound of her angry voice, her vicious fighting skill, her love for the plantlife she was so good with, a mind that would one day build a planet of life from lifelessness. Icey, calm, quiet, always relaxed, hard to sway from his course, a reasonable voice among an organization of brilliant but not always reasonable warriors. The rest of the Ghosts, a group of special minds that would one day realize powers of their own, complex, ripe with promise, the key to a vision I had seen long ago, that I must hold to whatever the cost.

But it would not be easy, and a single mistake could spell doom, not only for the Ghosts, but for the universe itself.

Altas's eyes left the screen, focused on the scan of the colony his hands had brought up of their own accord. Spikes of energy, massively powerful, danced here and there through the tunnels. He could not even begin to estimate the potential energy.

One spike was in Ops, where he was sitting.

He stared at the screen for a long time.

-Mercurial

Copyright © by Ghosts of the Antipode All Right Reserved.

Published on: 2004-06-16

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