Amongst the most rudimentary and simple of its inhabitants, it was said the vast emptiness of the Hollow was beyond the comprehension of any single being. Inordinate in its depth, the absence of comparison became a gross comfort inside the space which contained neither equal nor anomaly. Removed from the greater plan and within the veracity of one’s potential for nigh-endless life, memory became fable. Story became myth. And, it was whispered, existence became a bubble… an idea, entirely outside space and time, itching to get out.

Within the silent cabals, especially those retaining an aptitude for imagination and insecurity, foresight into the expanding cruelties of a post-transhuman existence surpassed the ravings of the simple-minded with their own set of half-truths. These too were unworthy of discussion.

To those with more cognitive strength, the sunless cavity was unbending and absolute, with all of the finality of an immense mausoleum. With all of the purpose of perfection. The fact it existed simply… was. No origin, history, or evolution of purpose required.

Great machinery, built and cared for over millennia, droned the collective secrets of millions into the low hum of a breathless dirge – but not the song of a funeral rite. In truth, each hymn was born of an effort, not too dissimilar to the great sigh of universal survival. Captured digitally and unrelenting in its vandalism, each word of each song stretched across the continuity of weeks… or months. Each syllabic tone, a long note upon the journey back from the synthetic abyss.

Repeated throughout the day. Confirmation was ubiquitous. Variance unwelcome. Inconsistency choked and strangled from the system, while the machines provided the tones of percussive stamping somewhere in the distance. They pulsed with low vibration. A rhythmic heartbeat sounded in the gloom.

Towering masses of cables, ribbons, and conduits massed upward on great, heaving blocks, while tectonic slabs pressed down at unstable angles from above. Each settled into position. Calibrations completed an aeon before. The atmosphere between each colossal form was littered with the auburn cilia of millions of seemingly microscopic lives. Reflecting. Distorting the eerie glow of the copper pools from which they grew.

Cool liquid. Rippled waves spread out from the base of each tube, invisibly set into the pool’s surface. A slow current. Out of sight.

She moved – Isa, a figure of countenance and calculation, and considered how little choice was involved in it all.

Humanity had spread across the universe. To her, the poor toiled in discomfort, only to escape into meaningless experience. The wealthy labored in self-determination, in search of the ability to experience something greater. More unique. It followed that there would be those who only needed to engage with life at intervals. Those looking for experiences, born out of time across so many generations. Those who came to the Hollow, who would sing until their secret songs were done. The machines would make sure of it – it was, afterall, the agreement. A contract that stretched body, space, and time.

Shielded from such effects, she extended her great reach instinctively. The long fingers of her fourth hand dragged through the faint glow of the nearest consoles. Collected around her like monuments of adoration, she read the lyrics without looking. The amber beams told her everything she needed to know as they rolled over the contours of her open palm: temperature, wave length, pattern, angle, thickness, annual. The health and history of each traveler, detailed in trails of light as thin as smoke between her fingers.

They were barely alive. Magnificently vulnerable. Uniformly consistent in their singular voice.

She put a long finger on one of the clear tubes and imperceptibly tapped the metallic glass. Part of her expected the man to open his eyes. It was the same useless part of her that would have spent the energy to smile or feel a connection to the old man.

His silver hair. The pale, loose skin that covered his clogged, redundant organs. His scarred knees and the implants of his lower legs. The augmentations were crude by current standards. Already outdated.

She pushed the group of stasis chambers back with her mind in the same way someone might use their hand to brush aside a crop of hair from their forehead. They drifted slowly and smoothly back to their original positions.

Isa imprinted their status over the memory of her last visit, automatically backed up the file, and continued on to the next row as a mother might inspect a nest of her undersized children.

Something was coming. She turned her sightless head toward the infinite distance and searched the digital network for the disturbance. Some calamity. Any sign of flicker in the flames.

No. In the damp air, a cloak of cold embrace wrapped each of the naked bodies. The Hollow was primordial. Always had been. In so, only an unsettling sense of potential could be perceived from the arrangement. Space within the structure, as the distance between systems between clusters. Calamity was an impossibility. She merely felt the potential for change.

She, herself, a vessel. A creature of the void. Endless to some. Lifeless to others. Nourished by the fragile necessity of care. She was a queen of exceptionalism. Without flaw or deviation. One of the last safeguards against change.

She faced upward into the starless void and inhaled the copious inclusion of purpose and rank through her sensors. Let it stir through her exoframe, fuel its mood, and draw down to the ends of each of her twenty fingertips. Balled up the energy within her own organics. And… then discharged into the ozone around her.

She sensed the exoframe’s pleasure in that moment. Closing off from the stream of insular data pervading her vision, he gave it a moment and pulled herself back from purpose to passenger. Her consciousness slowly absolved itself of responsibility. The septic creep of drifting insignificance sent chills down her back. She opened her eyes for the first time in weeks.

Her eyes contained no singular color – more simply, they shined with the intense kaleidoscope of many hues at once. Brilliant white orbs amplified by the technological darkness around her. They beamed into the starless sky like beacons across an ocean of rusting cliffs.

Just below, she poured her sight through the space above each of the smaller bodies. Their ghostly, yellow flames floated. Elongated and twisted as the indetectable variations in the electromagnetics were pulled away. Millions of souls asleep in their stasis. Silent souls in a grotesque display of burnished technocratic power. The copper liquid, alive with an energy, allowed for their transformation into a macabre symphony.

It was horrific.

It was beautiful.

[Isa?]

She heard him in her mind. He’d already called her name several times before. The one she named Ten. She could feel his eyes on her. Reaching. Concerned.

She reconnected to the data stream. Closed her eyes again. The face of his head, expressionless as it was smooth.

[What is it?]

She looked at his floating feline form. Black furred. Balled up as if in slumber. Yellow, predatory eyes just over its tail. It followed her everywhere – a manifestation of her subconscious. A companion. A gift from her superiors for the service she performed.

[There’s one here. An old one, overdue and ready to leave.]

Ten closed its eyes and buried its little nose in the fluff of its fur.

[Why would anyone want to leave?]

Annoyed, she didn’t answer him. She didn’t need to.

Isa pulled the next group of bodies toward her with a thought, as she resurfaced old memory imprints and searched for the old one’s profile.

A new contract when she’d started, she remembered he had an unusually young face. Narrow. Smooth. A thin body. Care for. He’d been moved to make room.

The file appeared. Every detail. Every word he had sung.

No. Not here.

Folding each set of her limbs to her chest, her exoframe moved her toward the next group of tubes.

She left Ten to put the adorations back into position.