10. Epilogue

In the following weeks, nobody slept. The Planeats always felt nearby. Every black splotch in the galaxy—and there were many of those—was studied for hours to find any possible danger. HERO forbade all its spaceships to change course or fly back to scout the area. The plan would only succeed if they provided absolutely no food for the Planeats anymore.

And so HERO’s spaceships purposely flew to empty pockets of space. Humans had known for centuries, thanks to advanced technology, that there was nothing there.

After a few days, Arren’s rocket broke loose from the safe herd. A decision that only half the passengers supported. They could become invisible now and had to risk visiting the nearest planet. Pick up fuel and food. Create a new home base, for Nibuwe had forbidden them from coming home.

Arren felt naked without AR-BOT. But he also felt she was still with him. All the facts she’d told him were still in his head. The logical way in which she solved every problem helped him stay calm in every situation.

Until father asked him for his next report. Him and Jannih had searched for proof that the Planeats followed them, but found none.

“Dad,” Arren started. He fidgeted with the weird knobs on this spaceship, too large and too fine for human hands.

A dog-like being hopped into the room. The Delja had captured many of Hespry’s children. Perhaps with the hope to undo the Planeats. There were so many that almost every family received a pet.

Arren coughed and found his voice. “I can’t write a report anymore. Not one as good as the last one.”

Father leaned forward in his chair and grabbed his son’s hands.

“That is okay. You really think I didn’t immediately know that report wasn’t your own work? I was happy. I thought I was happy with it. But, honestly, now I realize …”

He patted his son on the shoulder. “I’d rather receive a report filled with errors in your words, than the perfect texts from a robot. There is one thing a robot, I think, will never understand.”

“And that is?”

Arren’s mind still wondered about building his next robot. He knew it was the future. He knew it would benefit humanity. He just had to do it right.

“Mistakes and uncertainty make human life. If we can’t grow and learn, what will we ever do? If we can’t have a job, if we can’t fall and get up again, what is our goal in life anymore? If we ever reach the other side of the galaxy—reach God, they say—what will we do after that?”

“So the next robot I build must purposely make mistakes?”

Father sighed. “You’re not building a next robot. Nibuwe is already coming up with strict laws that basically outlaws them.”

He stood up. “You’re going to write a report, and then we’re going to laugh about silly spelling errors, and then I’m going to give you advice that will make your next report better. And we’ll keep doing that our entire life.”

“Let’s hope,” said Arren, as he stood up too, “that it’s a long life ahead of us. And that the Planeats slowly go extinct in the darkness of space.”

They had become the natural enemies of the Planeats. And they were that of humans. And so it must be: a reminder that everything should be balanced, for even something good, without a limit to it, will eventually turn into something horrible.

Jannih ran into the control room. Her long hair was plastered to her cheeks.

“HERO just contacted me. They say Planeats are dying already.”

“That’s too fast,” said Arren instantly. “Any living being can go quite a while without food. I assume they didn’t eat a new star or planet every day until now! Otherwise … otherwise the entire galaxy would already have been eaten!”

Arren didn’t want to think about it, because it was a real possibility.

Jannih dropped the radio from her sweaty hands, so she could point through the window. Their new target planet was visible now. A green-red dot in the distance.

“HERO claims the Planeats are shrinking, as their fog dissipates, until they are gone. As if …”

“As if it’s a chemical reaction,” Arren mumbled. “As if the fog reacts with some other particle that breaks it down.”

“As if they’re poisoned,” said Jannih. “That’s how the leader of HERO described it.”

Arren could hit himself in the face. That is the obvious answer to how smaller animals defeated bigger ones.

Poison.

And Begha-ti-Rec knew it. She poisoned the final planet, knowing the Planeats would eat it all. But how did she know? How did she figure out the right poison?

He jumped from his chair, cheering and raising his hands.

“We have a chance! No, I am certain, we did it! We met Planeats and defeated them!”

“Don’t cheer too soon, son.”

“Everyone should hear this news!”

Arren ran from the room.

“Whatever his job ends up being,” said his father, “a leading role does not seem wise to me.”

“But we did it, right?” asked Jannih. “We’ll live safely on Dinnifee, right?”

Father turned off the lights in the room. They didn’t need to steer anymore and would soon land on that new planet. His worries mostly subsided. They were still invisible and the Planeats seemed poisoned and dying.

“We’ll be the first humans to colonize the Fairy System. And then … I am going to sleep for a long time.”

Him and Jannih left the room too.

What he didn’t see, as he closed the door and started some anecdote about fairies, was that one screen turned itself on again.

Arrent was right, dear reader. AR-BOT was incredibly intelligent. More intelligent than humans, if you asked the right questions. While the Delja Spaceship had been attached to theirs, and AR-BOT felt her demise coming, she’d copied herself to the other spaceship. From there, she analysed the entire fight with the Planeats, until she found the solution.

Because the Delja Spaceship was made of Destinydust, the Heavenmatter that could turn anything into anything, it could invent a new particle. One that spread across a planet like wildfire and would specifically kill Planeats. Knowing the secret behind that poison, Begha-ti-Rec met Kirren shortly after.

Her sacrifice saved humanity and the final survivors of her own Delja. In her eyes, AR-BOT was a godly gift. She’d hidden the robot from Kirren’s eyes well, spread across all systems of their new spaceship.

The question remained, though, how the robot would react to Arren’s ultimate betrayal.

And so it was that life continued …