A New Friend (SF)

It had been a while since the ships stopped coming. Lillith told herself that it didn’t matter all that much. She had everything she needed. Shelter in her prefab dome. Feasts of plenty from her diverse garden. Books to read, endless vids to watch, all paid for by her simple labor of monitoring equipment that for the most part needed no intervention from her.

Lillith was a solitary creature by nature, which meshed well with the requirements of the job. She passed all the psychological screenings with ease. The life her employers described didn’t sound all that different from her usual life. Go to work, tend her garden, exercise, meditate, watch a movie, whatever. The only difference was the character of the noise.

Previously in her tiny second-floor walk-up, her hours were filled with traffic and bustle, cars and pedestrians, sirens, and street music. The clamor was unceasing. Now, there was nothing but the roll of the waves.

If there were anything like birds that flew over this alien ocean, she never heard the beat of their wings. The question of whether there were creatures in its wine-dark depths was a matter for the equipment she monitored.

Early on, when the dome was assembled and the garden tilled, there were stirrings. The scientists seethed with mad joy. What a discovery, and so early! But the stirrings ceased without revealing their cause.

The scientists left for more lucrative research projects on better planets. Lillith came to live in peace and watch nothing happen. And nothing did happen, except for her secret rebellion against The Rules.

Every day at exactly the same time, Lillith performed the forbidden ritual. At least that’s what she called it in her head. Really it was nothing more than venturing to the barren shore and dropping a single bead from a necklace she’d unstrung.

She watched the bead settle into the frigid waters until she could see it no more. Everything about this activity was wrong. It was black magic in a place of Science. If her employers learned of it, they’d recall her immediately. Have her sent to prison for the rest of her days. She was contaminating a biosphere. There was no greater blasphemy.

Another day, another bead sank into the dark waters. The alien sun slipped below its watery horizon, as if in celebration of this dark act. There was no axial wobble here; no precession of the seasons. Sunrise and sunset were more precise than the atomic clock built into the wall of the dome. Only one carnelian bead left. Tomorrow, the ritual would be complete. The spray of the waves, also forbidden to her, caressed her bare feet as she stood on her supplicant’s perch among the rocks.

Inside, the monitors showed the same stirring as every day. She gave her offering, and the depths sent forth their message. The central office labeled the stirrings as plate movement, too regular to be caused by an organic source.

Lillith wondered if that assessment made Lillith herself inorganic by extension, an adopted child of this sterile globe. It was a question she often pondered as she puttered around the very organic garden in the last of the evening’s twilight.

And then it was the day. The last bead in the Rite of the Beads. As she got ready to pitch it away into the foam, she realized the waves were different. More agitated. The sea foam crashed at her feet, soaking her to her knees.

On the horizon, something entirely new gathered. Storm clouds. The tiny red sphere slipped from her fingers, unheeded as the answer to her prayers crested above the waves.

Around its neck were her beads restrung, very far apart to accommodate its greater circumference. The beast floated to her on the surf. The many tentacles of its face caressed her, combing through her hair, fingers, and toes.

A noise like the shrieking of a long-distance packet burst vibrated out of its eyes. In an instant, Lillith was filled with the knowledge of things she didn’t understand. In the back of her mind, her sanity gibbered away about things she couldn’t know.

When she awoke, it was dark and she was soaking wet. Cold, inside and out. Below her, her feet were newly aware of the vibrations. Inside, the equipment would reassure her that she was alone. And so officially, alone she would remain. What would she call the one who received her gift, who answered her summoning? Dream? Hallucination? Monster?

Friend.