He’s joking. I think.
“Given they end up as an extinct species, the remnants living in a prison simulation, they’re not that much trouble.”
“That’s what happens to us?” I speak. “We die out?”
“Yes,” Tyank says, apparently forgetting that I am not supposed to be told anything “The aliens Vulcan must hunt, they poison the planet with mutagens which make it impossible for life to be sustained, and a small population are taken off-world to live inside a simulation, which they do not know exists.”
There are a lot of words there. I really only understand a couple of them. “We die out?”
“A very long time from now,” Vulcan says, trying to calm me down. “And I truly mean, millions of years from now. Dying is the fate of all species, in the end. Do not fret.”
“I’m going to fret! I don’t want my kind to die out.”
“You were willing to lie there and die in a cave at one point,” he reminds me. “Don’t worry, the species hasn’t entirely ended, not even in the time I am from. There are still humans alive. Not on this planet, but…”
“What happens to this planet?”
“Well, er…”
“The scythkin destroy it and turn it into a refueling station,” Tyank says. I’d almost forgotten he was still here, because he’s not here. He’s very, very far away. And he’s somehow influencing all of this. I feel more helpless than ever. I don’t know what a refueling station is, but I know whatever it is, it cannot be better than having this world intact. It seems to me that the future of humanity is cursed, and already written.
“Is there nothing we can do to change that?”
“There’s nothing we should do,” Vulcan says. “If we change anything of any significance here and now, there could be massive repercussions in the future. People who exist now might stop existing completely. History was written one way and it is fragile.”
“So I have to play out my life like a puppet? Knowing nothing I do matters because the future already happened?”
“Technically,” Vulcan says. “All of time has already happened. We just get to live in little slices of it.”
“If that is supposed to make me feel better, it doesn’t. It means nothing is real.”
“Everything is real. It’s just that choice is a very complex illusion. You still have to make the choices, even if you’re not actually making them.”
“Stupid,” I scowl. “I don’t want to live like that.”
“But you have already,” he says. “As I have.”
I narrow my eyes at him. He’s so accepting of the horror of what he is saying, it’s as if he doesn’t really understand the implications of it. I am a simple ancient human, apparently. My people will become very advanced over time in ways I can’t even imagine, but even I can see that this kind of life is one that is barely worth living. If I am nothing but fate’s puppet, then I don’t want to be here at all.
“Don’t let your temper get the better of you,” he says. “I don’t want to have to discipline you properly.”
I think back to the little taste of punishment he delivered me earlier. It led to excitement. Connection. Orgasm. I’m not afraid of punishment.
“Hurt me if you want. I don’t accept that this whole world is ruined by stupid aliens.”
“You know I have no intention of hurting you, sweet little human. But I have every intention of ensuring your obedience.”
“I’m not disobeying you. I’m thinking differently. If you will not allow that, you're no different than Trelok.”
“It’s just a warning,” he says. “Think before you let your temper take hold, before you say and do things you might regret.”
“And what might I regret?” I narrow my gaze further.
“Disrespecting me.”
The answer is as simple as it is barbaric.
“I thought you were supposed to be from the stars, a place better than ours, but you act just like the brutal men who steal and claim and kill. You expect me to respect you because I am small and weak and you have the power to harm me, but I will never respect any living creature for that reason.”
“I expect you to respect me, because respect is necessary for discipline, and discipline is necessary for order, and order is imperative if I am to keep you safe. This is a dangerous world, Tres.”
“I have noticed. And it is also a world in which there are no choices, apparently. Everything has already been lived once before and we are puppets to fate. So I choose to be wild, because if what you have said is true, then what happens to me will happen to me. I will not be able to die before my time - and when it is my time, there will be no way to save me.”
He stares at me so long and so silently I think I may have encountered the time without knowing it.