The teasing voice of Arren’s robot echoed through the room. He barely heard the high female voice over the scratching of his pen on paper.

“I must,” said the robot, just a piece of code hidden on some computers, “insist you take a look at the screen now.”

“No time, AR-BOT. Must write report for captain.”

Arren couldn’t talk and write simultaneously. Barely anybody could still write by hand, unless you happened to have a stern father that forced you. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead, even though human spaceships were now able to keep a perfect temperature at all times.

“Why does your father want hand-written reports?” asked AR-BOT. “The average human types 3.412 times faster than—”

“Do I know!”

“Was that a question? Yes, you know quite a lot, Arren. You made me, the most intelligent robot of this moment.”

“Well, thanks, but it wasn’t a question.” Arren sighed and looked for the right words to conclude the report. “Remind me to finetune you further when it comes to exclamations and sarcasm.”

“Okay! When would you like to be reminded? In an hour? Two hours? Three—”

“When I’m done with this.”

Arren gazed out the window. It was a black expanse now, their destination so far away that it could be a grain of sand stuck to the window. He tried not to look outside too often. Their spaceships could also simulate gravity perfectly now, which means the outside world could be your only reminder that you were actually walking upside-down.

“I must really insist you take a look at your screen,” said AR-BOT, louder than before.

Arren knew how intelligent AR-BOT was. Or, well, intelligent in terms of facts and numbers and anything but human oddness. If it repeated a message, he had to listen to it.

He walked past a table covered in cables, buttons and colored lights. Nothing out of the ordinary. AR-BOT functioned as it should, just as the several systems that father had placed under his control.

About time, that was! Arren could already repair a rocket engine when he was five! But apparently you had to wait until you were an adult before father allowed you to steer that rocket.

He grabbed the edges of a large screen. He pulled the bright square, held up by a moveable arm, to his eye level. It showed several dots—planets of which they’d known the existence for centuries now—and the current position of the rocket. White markings on a black background.

“Nothing’s wrong,” concluded Arren. “Is this your attempt at humor again?”

“You reduced my humor percentage to zero. Ever since the incidents with confetti in the bedrooms and my insults aimed at the president. Or should I also remind you of—”

“No time for this. We’ll reach Omnobereus soon. I must deliver my report, prepare for landing, and—”

AR-BOT sighed. He’d tried to make the algorithm more human. Softer, funnier. He repeatedly discovered the many disadvantages of doing that.

Eventually, AR-BOT just gave him the answer.

“A planet is missing.”

“What?”

Arrent studied the screen and counted the planets on his fingers. He called them all by name, until he froze at his eighth finger.

“Appareus is missing. AR-BOT, check the scanner for mistakes or failures.”

“Already did that. Found none. Though I must remind you that my power percentage is merely 20% and you’ve denied me access to many systems. Father’s orders, remember?”

“Yes, yes, I remember,” grunted Arren. “I can’t give you more power, not without permission.”

“Then I have no idea where Appereus is.”

Arren cursed his father and punched his first into the wall. It gave him nothing but a dull metal thud.

“I don’t imagine,” said AR-BOT, “that Appareus is hidden behind that particular wall.”

“A planet can’t disappear. There must be a mistake.”

Arren added a few more sentences to his report. They asked for more power for AR-BOT, to catch mistakes like these earlier. Then he ran out of his workroom.

The corridors were busy. Everyone knew they were bound to arrive at Omnobereus now, after years of travel. Doors were open wide. Objects were carried—and sometimes thrown—to be placed inside electronic capsules, though the older passengers still used regular briefcases.

As the son of the captain, Arren was a famous figure. That did not, unfortunately, give him the same status as his father, which meant nobody stepped aside for him.

He placed his AR-GLASS on the bridge of his nose and put its corresponding earbuds in his ears. The glasses constantly calculated the fastest route through the crowd, as it tried to locate father in the spaceship. By sensing warmth and radiation, it could even recognize people through walls.

How would he ever live without his inventions? How could those pitiful other humans live without his inventions to help them?

Though, this time, it was easy to guess where the captain was: the control room.

“I’ve searched my entire database,” said AR-BOT in his ear, “and found no proof of a planet disappearing in the entire history. I did find abundant proof of radars giving erroneous results. Such as—”

When he ran into the control room, father had already extended his hand. Arren pushed his crumpled report into it.

The text was rapidly read. Father sighed and groaned more deeply with each sentence.

“When will you learn to communicate properly, son? I count twenty spelling errors already. I don’t even understand what you’re saying here and here. I can’t give you important spaceship duties if you can’t report on them. I see progress, but …”

“You’re disappointed.”

“I’m not disappointed,” said father. He tried to look into Arren’s eyes. He still wore his large, blocky AR-GLASS, like a criminal who permanently had a black line over his face to hide his identity.

“I think,” whispered AR-BOT, “that he’s disappointed. His face matches 87.6% with an average disappointed face. His heartbeat is also—”

“Take off the glasses, son. I want to see your eyes.”

Arren pushed a button on the side. The display at the front changed color and drew two pixelated eyes, which matched his own in color and size.

Father grabbed his shoulders and shook him.

“Your real eyes!”

Reluctantly, Arren took off his glasses. He felt naked without them. He couldn’t think without AR-BOT tattering helpful data into his ear, and he couldn’t look at father for long before cringing and looking away.

“You will not get more power. I will certainly not give AR-BOT control over steering the rocket. That’s that. Go pack your things and—”

“Why? My algorithm is better at steering than humans!”

“I can,” said AR-BOT, now a voice audible in the entire control room, “steer about 5.126 times more precise than the average human.”

Father threw his hand into his long black hair. His other hand leaned on a large steering wheel with wooden spokes. As if he captained a pirate ship, not a gigantic rocket lost in space.

He turned red.

“Why are you trying to take away my job, son?”

“I’m not trying—”

“Why do you try to make me unemployed?”

“I don’t! I try to make everyone unemployed!”

The entire crew stopped what they were doing, dumbfounded.

“To my estimation,” said AR-BOT, “I can already take over 99% of human jobs with ease. Isn’t that—”

Father hit a button and reduced AR-BOT’s volume to zero. “Once we’ve landed, I shut off that robot forever. Then everyone can live again, naturally, as they should. Do you hear me?”

Arren wanted to give a retort, but found nothing.

Beeps sounded from the screen behind father’s back. The same type of screen as in his workroom—and a second planet had disappeared.

He pointed at the hole with a trembling finger. Father’s eyes followed, while several crew members checked the screen for errors.

Before their eyes, a third dot vanished. All the dying planets were near the edge, furthest away from their rocket, but now the disappearances crept closer. They all watched helplessly as dot, after dot, after dot was extinguished. More and more, their rocket flew into an unknown and dark emptiness.

“What in Ardex’ name is happening,” said AR-BOT softly.

“Ardex?”

“A saying from my database. One of the godchildren of old. It seemed fitting for such a deadly serious situation.”

“You have never seen anything like this?” father asked cautiously. He shook his head as if angry at himself for asking AR-BOT anything and raising its volume.

“Never,” said AR-BOT.

“You see, son? Useless.”

The next dot vanished as if someone wiped dirt from the screen.

Everyone in the control room ran to the large window at the front. From there, they should be able to spot Omnobereus in the distance now, as they’d land there in a few hours.

Or, rather, that should have been the case. That was the whole reason for their journey. The planet had been hand-picked for its perfect climate, and the rocket had just enough fuel for this journey and none other.

The space before them was awfully empty.

On the screen, only one misshapen dot remained, and it honed in on their spaceship.

Father spoke loud and commanding.

“Omnobereus is gone. Something is coming for us. Turn around immediately and flee to the Nibuwe star system!”

Arren ran through the corridors when all the lights shut off. The busy crowd froze for two seconds, then became panicked. Arren was pushed every which way by shoulders, arms and legs, as if he were a feather in a whirlwind. Suddenly they did respect his status, by pulling on his sleeve and demanding an explanation.

“We’re turning around,” he said curtly. “Everything shuts down to save fuel and electricity.”

“But … but … we were almost there?”

“Indeed. We were almost dead.”

No time for questions. Father had commanded he turn off AR-BOT completely too. Insane!

“I must,” said AR-BOT in his ear, “insist that I am essential to the functioning of this spaceship.”

“I know that. Father is the one who should hear.”

“I can measure the distance to our pursuer a thousand times a second. And steer the rocket away from danger a thousand times per second. Can your father do that?”

“No.”

He shook himself free. After a lot of effort, he had convinced half the spaceship to wear an AR-GLASS too. Crew members now asked those to take off their glasses and turn them off completely.

“Then I don’t see why you’re in any doubt,” said AR-BOT playfully.

“I’m not doubtful.”

“Your body language matches 84.29% with the average posture of hesitant or doubt—”

“Father forbid it! And that’s that,” he yelled. Fortunately, he was already away from eavesdroppers and back in his workroom.

“But it’s not the most logical choice,” said AR-BOT, confusion in her digital voice. “I hadn’t even told you about how our pursuer tries to confound our rocket by constantly sending electromagnetic signals that—”

Arren closed the doors.

“Hmm. Closing doors with force,” said AR-BOT, “will not protect you from electromagnetic signals.”

Amidst a tangle of cables and buttons stood a large grey cube. Everything fed into this. The cube itself had a cable thick as his arm, which went into to the power socket below the window.

Even the lighting in his room had been turned off, but now the emergency lighting came online. He had to do his work underneath faint yellow light. It wasn’t even enough to differentiate his fingers.

He pushed a new tangle of cables into the cube. Then he replaced the thick cable with an even thicker one. He rotated a round button, which ticked with every movement, until a small green screen displayed “100%”.

“Ah. That’s better,” said AR-BOT.

Arren felt the rocket accelerate, as if he suddenly stood on a treadmill. Despite all their systems to keep the environment within the rocket constant.

Father would thank him, yes. Thanks to AR-BOT’s help they would have a chance of fleeing their pursuer and reaching the safe haven of Nibuwe. He turned off all his other equipment and left the room.

The radio room was crowded. Everyone tried to send out messages from different devices, languages or codes.

None were successful.

Crew members in uniform sat on dozens of rotating chairs, circling the perfectly round room. The floor was flat, but the ceiling was a dome. At the top, an antenna worked hard to beam all their messages into space.

“It’s as if our communication is blocked by the pursuer,” said the captain.

“AR-BOT said something like that—” Arren swallowed his words. “Just before I turned her off, of course.”

He could only think of AR-BOT as a young woman. Even though it was just code. Even though he could’ve given it the voice of an adult, child, man, whatever he wanted.

He’d taken off his AR-GLASS. The earbuds connected to AR-BOT, however, stayed with him, hidden by his hair.

“I can try to break that shield,” she said. Arren nodded his agreement, afraid that whispering would give him away.

“What do we think?” Father stood in the center of the room. All turned around to look at him. “What follows us? What’s the danger?”

“Either it’s capable of hiding planets from us,” said a woman with strained voice, “or it’s capable of destroying entire planets. Whichever of the two it is, it’s a larger threat than humanity ever faced.”

She wiped her sweaty hands on her uniform a million times. She was barely a few years older than Arren, but had managed to attain the rank of Communications Captain, or Comcap.

Why did she get a high-ranking job? And not him? Father was stuck in the past. She was probably … probably a really old soul, or something. Why did he not see that robots were the future? That Arren wanted to take a step forward every day, otherwise they’d just go backward?

Several deep breaths later, the Comcap had calmed herself. “I suggest we involve the interplanetary army.”

“That exists?” asked father. “No time for speculation now, Jannih.”

“Yes,” said Arren. “AR-BOT claimed it exists.”

He should really stop mentioning the robot with every sentence. Especially in front of father. But … but everything he knew was because of that robot!

“Nobody is sure of the origin,” said Jannih. “But more and more human armies are joining. They try to spread soldiers throughout the galaxy, to help as swiftly as possible at the first sign of trouble.”

“They are to be trusted,” said Arren. “They mostly fought those CAJAR terrorists the past years.”

Father circled the room. He tapped people on the shoulder to make them resume work.

“CAJAR. Would they operate this far away from home? As far as I know, we’re the first ever to reach this new solar system.”

“Not true,” whispered AR-BOT in Arren’s ears. “Trevran, looking for the edge of the galaxy, visited too. It’s not unthinkable that the criminals of CAJAR would flee to a place where nobody lives yet.”

“We must assume that it’s CAJAR coming after us,” said Jannih. Her whole body shook by now. “For if it’s something else … if it’s aliens we don’t know or understand …”

“Jannih!”

Father placed his hand on her mouth and took her out of the room. Arren heard them whisper about “no need to sow fear”.

“I’ve made some inquiries, with myself,” said AR-BOT with a voice that sounded like she was smiling. “The interplanetary army is called HERO now. They’re not exactly nearby, but their communication channel is not blocked yet. Shall I sent a message?”

“Yes!” yelled Arren enthusiastically. The entire room looked at him funny. “Yes, good job everyone! Go on! Work it!”

“I’d like to remind you that I can only do this because you finally gave me extra power,” said AR-BOT. “Shall I tell that to dad?”

Arren turned around and whispered. “No! Stay secret. Only talk to me.”

The floor of the radio room shook, suddenly, severe as an earthquake.

All lights turned red; all machines turned on. Messages could not be sent out, but they did arrive, blasting all channels at once.

The recipients translated the messages into an immense roar.

The room filled with the roars of a hundred lions. Everyone put their hands to their ears. Arren stumbled outside, followed by the crew, as the antenna was ripped from the ceiling by the vibrations.

Together they gazed through the corridor windows. After a long patch of emptiness, no planet in sight, they saw something again.

A planet that probably used to be enormous. Now it was just a small rock with big holes.

As the spaceship neared the planet, maps were consulted. Paper maps of the solar system, because of course Arren’s father owned those. Reluctantly, he admitted that they were a benefit now, with all electricity off.

“There’s not supposed to be a planet here,” he concluded. “So we’re pursued by a roaring enemy who can move entire planets?”

They’d hoped for more clarity as they drew close. It didn’t come. Because of the holes, the planet had very weak gravity and the spaceship could scrape past without fear of colliding.

Arren secretly put on his AR-GLASS and activated its magnifying glass. Something moved on the planet’s surface. He didn’t need to zoom in much to recognize them: gigantic creatures walked back and forth. Some seemed enlarged versions of animals he knew, from home, while others were unknown. They all seemed to sleepwalk, uncontrolled, staggering towards … something.

Food. Safety. How did you survive on a planet with holes? A planet that was far from round? Such a thing could not appear naturally. Physical forces would always try to find a balance, which meant spreading your material evenly around you. That’s why planets automatically became a sphere. If he imagined the holes weren’t there, he could see this planet used to be one too.

Bites. They looked like bites. This planet had been a tasty snack to some monster.

His AR-GLASS warned him. The spaceship’s battery was draining. Arren quickly shut it off and hid it in his backcapsule.

“We must land at some point,” said father. “Looking for food and fuel.”

“Not here,” said Arren. “Those animals would eat us alive.”

It was hard to judge at this distance, but he thought one paw of a lion there would be as large as an entire human. If their jaws were just as large, they might even eat the spaceship instead.

Now that their planet had been eaten, they only had a tiny space to live on. Arren felt like he should help the poor creatures, like you do when you find a sick stray puppy. But what could they do? He felt powerless. Fighting against forces he didn’t understand.

Jannih confirmed Arren’s proposal with a nod. She didn’t dare speak anymore.

“We fly on,” said the captain. “But we land on the very first planet without immediate danger.”

“That should only take an hour,” said AR-BOT in Arren’s ear. “I detect the next planet there. I must insist, though, that you think twice before landing anywhere.”

Arren smoothed out the wrinkled paper maps. Someone had drawn the current path of the rocket with a felt-tip pen: a straight line back to Nibuwe. At their current speed, in an hour, absolutely nothing was near that line.

“So there’s also not supposed to be a planet there,” whispered Arren. “Are you sure, AR-BOT?”

Silly question. Of course the robot was certain. AR-BOT’s voice sounded like she grinned. “I must insist you stop doubting me so much.”

The map was enormous, many meters by many meters. They were flying in some tiny corner of the galaxy. Somnia, Nibuwe, it was all a drop in an ocean that was mind-bogglingly vast.

Humanity had discovered many messages, maps and conversations over the years. AR-BOT thought they belonged to Ardex and the original godchildren. In many conversations, they talked about the planet Dalas and how it was all the way at the other edge of the galaxy.

It became the goal of humanity. Reach Dalas, reach the edge of the galaxy, reach … God?

Well, then they’d have to cross five meters on this map first, which was an incomprehensible distance in real life. They would never make that without hyper-intelligent robots.

As father exited the control room, a crowd of passengers stopped him.

“What is going?” a woman at the front demanded.

“When will we arrive?”

“Why are we going back?”

“Answer us!”

His father stayed silent until they gave him more space.

“There was reason to think CAJAR had taken over Omnobereus. We chose to be on the safe side and modified our journey to a different planet. There is no reason for panic and we’ll land shortly.”

Father lied against his own passengers! Why? Did they not have the right to know how likely they were to die any moment?

“Your father makes illogical choices,” said AR-BOT. “No wonder he’s afraid to lose his job. My database states that lying only has a 4.5% success rate.”

The crowd was satisfied and scattered. Father gave them all a warm smile and stepped back inside the control room.

“Arren. Once we land, you go to the planet surface and search for usable material. Then you report your findings with me.” He looked to the side. “Jannih, go with him.”

Yes, yes, his intentions were clear. He wanted them off the rocket, away from passengers and the control room.

An hour later they spotted the next planet, as AR-BOT predicted. Arren and Jannih wore their spacesuit and stepped onto the surface.

This planet had been eaten too, but with less of a passion. It also gave him a clear view of the surroundings. If their pursuer had a large spaceship, he thought he might be able to spot them now. He saw nothing but darkness.

Jannih shrieked with every step. She clung onto Arren as if her life depended on it. He tried to stay strong, especially with father’s eyes at his back, but his heart nearly exploded in fear too.

“Analysis done,” said AR-BOT in his ear. “This planet knows a few edible plants. Yes, I was surprised too.”

“Useless to us,” said Arren.

Ever since research proved that plants also had emotions and could communicate, eating plants had been outlawed too. They now made all their food by combining raw organic particles into nutritious balls or cakes. Similar to the gnawed planets, but now it was the humans taking bites.

“There are also enough nutritious particles,” said AR-BOT. “And fuel to generate electricity. The signals I am registering suggest a fertile field just behind those rocks.”

Since starting their return journey, the food on the spaceship had to be divided into smaller and smaller portions. Arren’s stomach rumbled at the thought of food. Father said those balls from the machine tasted like plastic and he still secretly ate plants when nobody was looking.

The further they drifted from the spaceships, the worse AR-BOT functioned. Her energy and original code all had to come from his workroom. She tried to say something, but it was just noise and random words.

“Arren, erm, who are you talking to?”

Jannih realized the answer herself.

“Are you insane?” she whispered. “Captain Kirren will throw you off the ship if he finds out!”

“Then he mustn’t find out!”

They walked around the rocks. Hesitantly. One misstep and you might fall into a “bite” out of the planet. At the ground level, these holes looked like deep craters and cliffs, sometimes wide enough that you could not see the other edge—the planet simply appeared to end all of a sudden.

They stood eye to eye with a gigantic dog-like creature.

Jannih screamed. Arren grabbed a stone and threw it at the monster.

The stone bounced off of it, as if the dog was a statue. But not one made of stone. The dog was lifelike, including fur and teeth, but didn’t freeze on the ice cold planet.

The monster also didn’t respond. Maybe it wasn’t dead, but it also wasn’t dangerous.

Arren looked past its paws and spotted moving creatures. A pack of dog-likes, similar to the statue. They were large, but nothing near those animals from the first planet.

“That is,” croaked AR-BOT, followed by more static noise. “Hespryhound.”

“Hespryhound? The Heavenmatter? That magical pet dog of Feria?” Arren asked.

Arren placed his hand, covered by a thick layer of spacesuit, against Hespry’s paws. It felt like being in the presence of a god. As if the touch alone would give him extra strength and energy. Perhaps he’d hoped to make it come alive as well.

It wasn’t to be. The Hespryhound stayed silent.

The dogs behind him did suddenly sprint at them.

Arren threw his machine into Jannih’s hands. It was a large inflated ball with a thick, flexible trunk at the front. A galactic vacuum cleaner.

“Suck in as much material as you can!”

The ground around them slowly disappeared as the particles entered the machine. The dogs were closing in.

Arren stepped forward, hands raised.

“We come in peace!”

Jannih called him insane and already retreated to the spaceship.

The dogs kept running, tongues lolling and eyes mad.

“Who destroyed your planet?” he asked.

Arren didn’t know what he was doing. The legendary Mindy had once proved that animals were intelligent too, and that they, with effort, might be able to communicate with humans. On Platsu they lived harmoniously with animals, even though the Radio Silence of Platsu still meant nobody received any news or messages from them.

But could the dogs even hear him, through his spacesuit?

He sunk down. The dirt below his feet had been sucked away by Jannih. She’d filled the entire ball. Other crew members did the same in other locations, hundreds of meters apart.

Arren stood alone in front of the pack, without weapon or protection.

The dogs slowed down. They pushed their snout again Arren’s glass helmet, making his vision foggy. They barked.

AR-BOT, to its own surprise, could translate. “Flee while you can! Flee! Silly human creature! Arrogant human creature! Nobody can defeat this monster!”

“I …”

They were too large to take onto the ship.

But what if these were Hespry’s children? Could they save something of the original godchildren? Father would love it: back to the past. He would love it too: the magic would help humanity progress forward.

“I will come back for you.”

Arren turned around and was the last to enter the spaceship. Father pulled him inside. His other hand held a laser gun pointed at the dogs.

Before his father could cause a disaster, Arren hit the big button to close the doors.

The material collected was instantly converted into food and fuel. It wasn’t much, though. Father still kept the electricity shut off. They’d need to hold out like this for a week, then they would likely be able to land on a human-controlled planet.

It made Arren nervous. Weren’t they leading their pursuer straight to human civilization now? Weren’t they bringing their biggest enemy precisely to the worst location?

An enemy that took bites out of planets. He was certain now. The thought made Arren struggle to take any more bites out of his own food.

Along the way, they kept stumbling upon new planets. The bites taken out of them grew smaller every time. Larger and larger parts of these planets were still intact. The life on such planets, both animals and planets, also grew smaller. Father, however, refused to land on any of them.

“You were almost dead, Arren!” he screamed when they were alone int he control room. The spaceship slept; Arren had only come to deliver his new report.

“She …” He couldn’t give away that AR-BOT had helped him communicate with dogs. “They weren’t evil. I felt it.”

“You felt that? Oh, well, then it must be alright!”

“What do you care, anyway?” Arren beamed back. “You lie to the entire rocket about what happens. You send me outside first because I am too useless to keep inside!”

Father turned to stone, his hand limp on the steering wheel. “You really think that? That I don’t care about you?”

“It … it … it looks like it!”

“He cares about you,” whispered AR-BOT in his ear. “His tone and choice of words matches 77% with—”

Arren pretended to tidy his hair, while really pulling out his earbuds.

“All that new technology, the robots, walking around with electrical glasses all day … it’s not natural, son. I want to protect you from something that seems fun now but will eventually ruin all our lives.”

Arren was about to reveal the secret. That AR-BOT had been steering the rocket for a while now, and that she was the only reason they hadn’t been caught by their pursuer yet. That AR-BOT controlled everything now.

He bit his tongue.

“It’s the future, dad.”

“Then it’s not a future I’d want to live in. I lie to my passengers because I understand they’re humans. If I tell the truth, it sows panic and division. We are thousands of people confined to one tiny rocket. I can not have people attack each other, ignore my commands, or steal each other’s food.”

Father turned the wheel. He looked remarkably like a pirate of old sailing the Sultry Sea.

“Ask the robot, and it would have told the truth, with the exact numbers and details about how likely everyone is to die. And it would have made the spaceship a war zone. You must be human to understand humans. Any other thought is madness.”

They passed the next planet. It only had a tiny bite at the top. If there were creatures here, they were too small too see.

The pursuer closed in on them. They’d hoped for more time, but a collision was due any moment now. Their spaceship barely held weapons, and even if they had them, they had no electricity to use their full capability.

They had to pray for a safe return home—and that their home planet hadn’t moved—before it came to a battle. Or HERO, the interplanetary army, had to hear their prayers.

Arren’s optimism had left him completely. The roar in the radio room was deafeningly loud and never ended, which forced father to shut down the room and stop listening. All passengers nearby had fled to a different room, their faces bleak.

The report burned in his hands. He threw it at father, happy to be rid of it.

The captain studied the text for ten seconds … and smiled.

“That’s what I like to see, boy! Clear language. Exact report. No oversights. You see, you learn quickly.”

Father gave him a solid hug. Arren accepted it awkwardly, unsure how long it had been since the last one.

Additionally, AR-BOT had written that report—not him.

Father looked hopeful. Arren wanted to say something, he wanted to say so much, but without AR-BOT whispering in his ear it felt like every language was a foreign language. In the end, his brain could only repeat facts from the report.

“It seems like our pursuer takes bites out of planets. We have just seen its evolution in reverse.”

“Please explain that one, son.”

“The planets held smaller bites and smaller animals each time. We’re nearing the place where this … monster was probably born. Before the monster grew and was able to take larger bites out of planets. Just like life on Somnia started with tiny animals who lived off of sunlight and oxygen, after which they grew bigger and ate bigger things. The chain of food continues, up and up.”

“You think this is a living being that sees planets as their food? They’re so high on the food chain, that it must regularly eat a planet to stay alive?”

Arren swallowed. “Yes. That is consistent with my findings.”

“But …”

For the first time, father’s mask peeled off. He was scared to death and hopelessly lost. His body was tense. His skin was red and covered in swollen veins.

“We’re on our way home. You think the monster was born there?”

“It seems that way. But the real question is—”

“How do we fight a monster that eats entire planets?”

No answers came. Father clung to his steering wheel in exhaustion; Arren was tired too. He whispered good night to his father and left.

As the conversation bounced around his thoughts, he put his earbud back in.

“AR-BOT, how could you translate the dog’s language for me?”

“What do I know!” she said, a perfect imitation of how Arren said it earlier. “You trained me by giving me all the information that humans had. Books, pictures, experiences, games, everything. By looking at all of that, I developed a deep understanding for how the world works. So deep, in fact, that I have knowledge inside me that you didn’t purposely put into me!”

“Such as … dog language?”

“You were right. These were Hespry’s children. They spoke the language of the original godchildren.”

“What else can you do that I don’t know about?”

The corridors were silent as death. All slept. Or they shivered in the dark, with lights and heating turned to an absolute minimum, as they fearfully waited until they were finally home. The disappointment of failing to build a new colony on Omnobereus was tangible. The growing distrust in the captain was too.

“I don’t know that,” said AR-BOT. “It will come out when you ask for it. Otherwise, my own knowledge is like a fog to me, as it is to you.”

“Okay. Hespryhound. Think about the Hespryhound. Tell me everything you associate with it.”

“Last spotted on a farm. Rumors are that he joined a space expedition, kidnapped by an organization they call Delja. The Delja can make themselves look like humans, but they have evolved into their own species entirely. Then … nothing. Does that help? Is that new information? Shall I explain the entire history of the Hespryhound, for which I’ll need approximately seven thousand hours?”

“That won’t be necess—”

The floor rotated.

The corridor lights flickered. Arren hit his head against the wall. The roar from the radio room was audible here as the vibrations blasted open the doors.

Arren held his breath. He studied the dark radio room for signs of life, unexpected shadows, but nobody came out.

He fled to his workroom at an inhuman pace. The floor rotated again. He had to roll the final bit of his journey, until his wounded head butted open the door.

His trembling fingers grabbed the cables on the table. He pulled himself upright. The dot that had chased them was now in exactly the same location as them.

He looked out the window.

Another spaceship had collided with them and spun through space, out of control.

The other spaceship did not react to attempts at communication. Some of the radios were moved to a different room, where they still tried to send out messages. Without success.

Captain Kirren observed the spinning spaceship for a while. The crew joined him. There was no pattern to it.

Arren was certain. Either it was abandoned, or the systems inside were completely broken. Whatever it was, they needed to know.

Five crew members were attached to their outer hull, using a gray trunk. One that was similar to the machine they’d used to collect food particles before. They jumped into space and grabbed the other spaceship.

They bound its entrance to their own exit. This created a narrow bridge between the spaceships. Kirren stood behind the door with his five best soldiers, ready to enter.

“I don’t recognize that model of spaceship,” whispered AR-BOT in Arren’s ear.

“Why do you whisper?” he asked.

“Oh. You do that too, when you want to be secretive. Why can’t I do it?”

“You’re allowed to, I just don’t understand—” Arren looked up. “If you don’t know the model, it’s not a human spaceship, is it?”

He ran forward to stop his father. The doors had already opened and Kirren stepped away, gun raised.

Arren couldn’t reach him. He was smart enough not to yell and give their presence away now. Him and Jannih followed the soldiers at a distance.

The spaceship interior looked remarkably like theirs. It was slightly bigger, the corridors wider, and the electronics more elegantly hidden behind walls and switches. Here, too, emergency lights were on. Unless the creatures on this rocket had far better eyes than humans and this was their normal brightness.

The further they went, the more parts of the spaceship were bent, destroyed, or removed entirely. Arren kept looking behind him, the hairs on his back raised.

They arrived at a juncture.

“When in doubt, shoot,” whispered Kirren.

Half the soldiers went left, half went right.

Arren stuck close to his father. Jannih stuck close to him.

“I can do this, I can do this, I can do this,” she whispered to herself.

The next corridor held no lights at all. Arren instinctively put on his AR-GLASS, which had a weak flashlight at the front. Father was thankful for the light, but didn’t look from whom it came.

Multiple soldiers turned their heads at once. As if their ears pricked up.

Arren heard it too: a soft buzzing, maybe distorted humming or roaring, from the bowels of the ship.

The faint light of his AR-GLASS revealed a blood trail across the wall.

The group froze.

“This suggests they were victim,” said father. “But is the attacker still here?”

Without a word, they decided to push on, but at an increased pace. The exploration mission had changed into a possible rescue mission. But AR-BOT didn’t recognize the rocket? What did that mean?

The blood trail continued for a while, like a gruesome map of directions, until they turned another corner.

Jannih screamed. Arren placed a hand over her mouth. Father slammed the many buttons on the wall until a bright light turned on.

The white flash revealed a group of people—men, women, and children. They huddled close to the ground, hidden behind chests and tables. The blood trail ended at a young girl with a large head wound.

As soon as Kirren dropped his weapon, just a little bit, they jumped at him. They grabbed his uniform, as if he were their only lifebuoy in a storm.

They cried tears of joy.

“Our saviors! Thank the gods! We must go, go, go away.”

“Where is your captain?”

“Dead.”

“Does the ship still function?”

They shrugged. Some parents stuck to their hiding place, becoming a shield for their children.

The space was filled with an assortment of plants. A colorful and natural image that Arren hadn’t seen in a long time. They grew from buckets filled with a brown substance. The smell of fresh flowers and earth reminded him of home.

The sound they’d heard before, the soft humming, came from the plants. Then it must be the Singing Flowers, right? That was Eeris’ Heavenmatter.

“That head wound needs proper care,” whispered AR-BOT. “Heavy blood loss. The hearbeat of the girl has been dropping steadily.”

Arren walked at the girl, but father stopped him. “Find the control room. First get the ship under control.”

“How should I—”

“You really think I believe you shut down AR-BOT?”

A dozen excuses shot through Arren’s thoughts. He picked the approach of the clenched fists and yelling.

“She’s still on, yes, at minimal power. And she says we must help the girl, or she goes into shock and dies!”

“It’s a minor head injury,” grunted father. “Group before individual.”

“Who has more medical knowledge? You or AR-BOT? The captain with the paper maps or the robot who has studied all medicine in the world?”

His father’s mouth became a line. Insubordination. Arren would feel the consequences of that later.

The girl turned around. Her arms and legs shook. She spoke nonsense as spit dripped over her chin.

“Help her,” said father.

Arren and Jannih cared for the girl, as her parents looked on, wary.

Footsteps sounded from behind.

The other group of soldiers returned. They pushed an elderly woman in a white coat ahead of them. Her curls were a tangled mess. She looked like a stubborn scientist being pushed from her laboratory.

“And you are?”

“The commander. We flee the Planeats. No time to lose—let go of me!”

Kirren studied his son. Arren was immersed in the treatment of the girl, following the detailed instructions of AR-BOT.

He shook his head and pointed at the best second captain he had. “She’ll be your new temporary captain. We fly on at full speed. In a few days, we reach the Nibuwe system.”

“Nibuwe? A few days? What magical invention have you done?”

“It’s not far.”

“We’re an entire solar system away.”

“Pardon?”

Arren looked up. Suddenly it became oh so clear. Why they’d flown past all those “misplaced” planets, as if they …

He relayed further instructions to Jannih, jumped, then ran back to their own spaceship with his father. They stormed into the control room. The paper maps still waited for them on the square table in the center.

Father grabbed a new pen. Arren helped him draw a new line. It started from the moment they turned around and continued until now.

But it went in completely the opposite direction they thought they were traveling. Away from Nibuwe.

The line matched precisely with all the planets they’d seen, at the exact moments they’d seen them.

“Damn you, Arren!” he screamed.

He kicked a chair and broke the metal pipe that glued it to the floor. Not long after, the entire chair flew through the space.

“AR-BOT has sent us in precisely the opposite direction,” mumbled Arren.

“You gave … you … gave that thing full control over steering the spaceship? Damn it, son—”

The scientist from the other spaceship reached the control room too. She pointed at the window and yelled they had to move.

Arren and Kirren saw nothing special. Yes, perhaps a slightly darker dark spot, in an otherwise dark galaxy. But the scientist went wild.

“AR-BOT!” screamed Arren. “Explain yourself!”

He didn’t need his earbuds anymore and threw them across the room too. The genie was out of the bottle, and if she wanted, this ghost could control all speakers in an entire room.

“I understand your anger,” said AR-BOT calmly.

She sounded sincere. Could she be sincere? It was just a piece of code. Shouldn’t she be incapable of lies or deceit?

“Arren asked me to save you. So I saved you.”

“Saved?” screamed the scientist. “You brought us straight to the jaws of the Planeats!”

She kept pointing until Arren saw it too. That darker spot became a large hole. Like a whirlwind made of black wind, like a hole that sucked in all that lived, like a color so black it hurt your eyes because they looked at absolutely nothing.

The spot grew rapidly. Sometimes it seemed to grow eyes, hundreds of them, over its entire body. Sometimes a hole appeared and looked like a mouth. One thing was certain: the creature was larger than a planet and it had spotted them.

“I didn’t ask you to save us,” said Arren. The crew around him scrambled to take back control of the ship. “I asked you to bring us home!”

“But people lie. They don’t say what they really want. They’ll do anything required to survive. That’s what my database showed, the one you used to train me.”

Survival. AR-BOT had understood what survival meant and that humans liked it. So when father threatened to turn her off forever when they came home … AR-BOT made sure the rocket would never come home.

For AR-BOT would stop existing then.

Arren ran to his workroom. AR-BOT understood his intent—shut her down—and locked all the doors.

The other spaceship had pointed its nose in the right direction and accelerated. Kirren rotated the steering wheel to do the same.

The roar of the Planeat didn’t need to be captured using radio anymore. It was audible, instantly, through the trembling windows, the fried machines, and your own rattling bones. The control room used to be well-lit by two suns in the distance—now the Planeat darkened them both with his enormous body.

The monster opened his mouth.

Arren injured his fists banging against the door of the control room. AR-BOT refused to open them. His father could turn the wheel all he wanted, it would not steer the ship. AR-BOT had full control and turned the rocket away from the monster.

They flew past the other rocket when the monster took his first bite.

Arren closed his eyes and clung to the door. The floor shook. Crew members fell on their face behind him.

But he lived!

Alarms rang. The control room turned red as blood. A screen showed the status of all rooms on the spaceship—and they’d lost three entire rooms already. The backside of the spaceship had been eaten. This leaked all their oxygen, unless someone closed the connecting doors in time.

Arren felt his door open just a little bit, then close again. Had the monster killed AR-BOT? Weakened her?

“AR-BOT! Close all doors connecting sections of the ship!”

Nothing happened. Father had to manually press the right button and prevent the spaceship from imploding from the hole at the back. Five entire rooms were gone. They had to accept that.

“AR-BOT? OPEN MY DOOR.”

They’d tried cutting AR-BOT’s access to electricity, but even that had been cleverly prevented by the robot. If Arren could reach his workroom, he could shut her down definitively. But what then?

A new hit. The monster ate two more rooms. They were a small fish at the mercy of a hungry Planeat.

Of course. AR-BOT had also suppressed their communication. Most likely, nobody had received any of their messages asking for help.

The door buzzed again, as if it lost electricity, and opened a crack. Arren squeezed through, but the gap was too small.

“I keep you safe! I told you so!” said AR-BOT. The rocket found a new gear; the monster chased them again.

“I promise I won’t shut you off,” said Arren.

Another hit. His dizzy body sought support from a table.

“Let us out!”

“But people lie,” said AR-BOT in a sad tone.

Flashes of light streaked past the windows. Different colors, some round, some square. The other spaceship did have weapons! They shot holes in the Planeats. It delayed the beast, until it had refilled the holes and continued.

From close range the black cloud was filled with the remains of other planets. Chunks of stone and dirt swirled around skeletons of animals and a forest’s worth of trees. The number of them was larger near the center, as if the beast’s stomach was there. Arren didn’t know if he should view Planeats as animals, or an entirely different type of life.

It nibbled at their spaceship again. An entire section had been eaten now. Arren could only hope the passengers got away; that AR-BOT didn’t obstruct them.

The door opened fully.

Any time they lost a part of their spaceship, AR-BOT seemed temporarily confused or weakened. He looked back at father’s fear-stricken face.

“You can turn off AR-BOT?” asked Kirren.

“Yes. Just … just code on a computer.”

The corridor was dark. Most lights had tumbled down. Other electronics had fried because of the sudden gaps and charges in their power grid.

Silence reigned, but not emptiness. Scared passengers looked like beggars, searching for answers in all corners. Two men helped someone with a broken leg. One of the lights fizzled in a puddle of blood.

“Do it.”

Arren took a deep breath. “You can steer the rocket away from the monster yourself?”

“I trained for this my entire life, son.” His hands grabbed the smooth spokes of the steering wheel. “If I can’t do this, I’m not worthy of the title of Captain.”

A new voice rose in the control room. An older woman, confused and hurried.

“Erm, hallo? Hallo?”

“Hallo?” the crew screamed at her in unison.

It was Jannih’s job to receive this communication. But where was she?

“We are HERO. We received your plea for help because of CAJAR troops. Where are you?”

“Deep inside the Giant System,” said father. “But the problem has grown … beyond giant.”

“Beyond …”

“You can say our problem has become the size of a planet. I’ll send our location.”

As his crew found the right buttons, AR-BOT had recharged and broke down communications.

Fud! He’d wasted all that time with standing still and watching.

He ran through the corridors. Passengers pulled on his uniform, asking for any updates, asking about the plan, begging if he—if he wanted to keep the robot on?

Many of them had put on their AR-GLASS again. He’d taught at least half of them how AR-BOT worked and they happily used it since.

What brought more chaos? Leaving the robot on or taking it away from them now?

As he turned the corner, colored lights flashed past the window again. The Planeat could be delayed. They hadn’t lost any new rooms since. But for how long? How much weapon power did the other spaceship have? How much did they have themselves?

Every corridor brought him closer to the backside of the spaceship. Until he froze—his breath taken away by fear and wonder—because he passed awfully close to the Planeats. As if a black mist darkened the entire window. As if it had evil eyes that stared straight through him.

The intermediate doors shut. AR-BOT still tried to stop him! He grabbed the carrying capsule from his back and threw it between the closing doors.

They remained open. A gap just wide enough for Arren’s frail body to push through.

It was as he feared. The corridor was deserted, with the exception of several dead bodies slammed against the wall. He almost threw up.

Don’t look at it. Don’t think about it!

He shivered. The pressure in this corridor was wrong now, which made it feel as if heavy weights pressed on his body at all angles. The rocket—no, AR-BOT—tried to repair it.

Only a few more intermediate doors. Then he’d reach the hole in the ship. Fortunately, his workroom was located just before it.

AR-BOT suddenly turned on all the lights. It blinded him. He stumbled forward with an arm over his head. He turned left, his hand on the handle of his workroom door, but it was locked. Of course.

He heard buzzing. Nothing and nobody was close to him, but the buzzing grew louder until it sounded painful to his ears.

He looked up far too late.

AR-BOT sent a camera down from the ceiling. The trunk that held it wrapped around Arren’s foot. With a yell, he was pulled to the ceiling, dangling upside-down, held up by only his ankle.

The Planeat’s shadow washed over him. The monster approached again and prepared the next bite. Arren dangled helplessly, his nails scraping the walls and doors.

His eyes teared up.

“You were right, dad! You were right! I should’ve never invented AR-BOT.”

The spaceship shook. Arren saw an entire chunk vanish.

AR-BOT briefly lost control of the camera.

Arren pushed off the door and tightened his stomach, which allowed him to fold up and climb on top of the camera. He stomped and kicked until the camera broke from its cables and fell to the floor, scattering into innumerable metal shards.

With one of those he broke the lock on his room.

His hand flew to his table.

AR-BOT’s voice, panicked and crying, echoed around him.

“No! Don’t kill me! I help! I help!”

He ripped out all the cables.

Arren’s spaceship spun out of control. It twisted like a carnival attraction and made Arren throw up. He hoped it would only be a few seconds, but it kept going for minutes on end. It even seemed to speed up.

Come on, dad. Take control!

“Help!”

Jannih’s voice.

The next rain of laser bullets whizzed past the windows. It was the only light in the corridor.

Where did Jannih’s voice come from? Arren put on his AR-GLASS. It would perfectly locate her, especially if she kept making noise, just like he’d found his father before.

The glasses, of course, did nothing anymore.

Arren’s fingers itched to reconnect AR-BOT. Survive all this without his robot? It felt like standing in front of an army of a thousand soldiers, alone, sick, and blindfolded.

No. He had to do it without her.

But how? How in Ardex’ name did he find one woman on a dark and damaged spaceship?

After coming close to the Planeat, he decided to call it an animal anyway. It bit at the rocket like an animal. It chased them like a predator chased prey, pausing sometimes, then suddenly attacking again. But it only attacked their rocket, not the other one.

He looked outside. The other rocket was invisible. Only the laser bullets gave away its location.

Father finally regained control. Arren’s body was thrown from one wall to another, giving him a different view of the battle each time.

“Help!”

Her voice sounded to his left. How could his ears hear this accurately?

The Planeat might be strong and large, yes. But humans had intelligence and refinement. He felt it had to be the key to defeating the danger. Or maybe it was an excuse to not lose hope.

One by one, he kicked open the doors to all the rooms. He discovered many groups of people hiding below tables or beds. He encouraged them to move to the control room at the front. Everyone should be there. It would be the safest place.

Not many dared follow his advice.

“Help! Someone!”

Something else mixed with her voice: knocking and bumping.

An intermediate door. She was stuck behind the next one. Father had closed it after the last attack, because his screen couldn’t show if there were still passengers there.

“AR-BOT, break the—”

Not an option anymore.

Arren grunted and looked for his uniform. He had used a screwdriver for building AR-BOT’s computer cage. With it, he loosened a gray box stuck to the wall. It revealed a row of buttons and cables.

“Jannih! Hold on!”

The Planeat closed in for his next bite. Arren tried all the codes he knew, but none worked. He unscrewed the entire panel and studied the tangle of electronics that served it.

“Arren? Oh, Arren, open the door! Please!”

The Planeat snapped his jaws shut. Jannih screamed.

Arren cut a cable with his screwdriver.

The doors opened.

He reached inside and pulled Jannih inside. The pressure in the room instantly fell away, sucking out their breath and almost making them faint. Arren connected the two broken cables again to shut the doors.

Clouds of black Planeat fog had entered too. They surrounded Jannih—but they did nothing. The fog itself wasn’t dangerous then. It was about the entire Planeat. Just as a human’s lips weren’t dangerous, but the entire mouth was.

They searched for breath, then ran back.

Jannih held a round machine. Her own radio, stolen from the radio room. The small screen was broken and showed an elderly woman with a recognizable voice.

“HERO is almost with you,” she assured her. Had she seen what had happened her? Did the interplanetary army know what they were walking into? “I’ve spread this information throughout the galaxy. If those … those … monsters come near the Nibuwe system …”

“Fortunately, Arren’s robot sent us in the opposite direction,” said Jannih. Her hands shivered and frequently dropped the radio. “If we lead them away …”

The woman’s face turned stern, as if giving her children a lecture. “We do not use a spaceship with a thousand passengers as fish bait! Don’t you dare try some heroic sacrifices. It won’t work anyway: if they really eat planets and spaceships, then you’ll just be giving it more food. You’ll be feeding the monster! We’re coming to save you and to defeat the Planeat.”

The screen switched to a layout of the Giant System. Arren’s spaceship was a dot near the edge. The HERO soldiers were a flock of dots that rapidly closed in.

Bodies of passengers floated past the window, through the emptiness of space. A single heartbeat of full exposure to the galaxy, no more than the blink of an eye, and it was over for you. Space had no oxygen, no atmosphere, nothing of what humans needed to survive. If the spaceship didn’t hold, they had no chance at all.

Jannih looked away. Arren focused on the corridor ahead.

By the time they reached the control room, they hadn’t been attacked again. The other spaceships had stopped shooting. The Planeat seemed satisfied, perhaps delayed by a full belly.

Arren hoped to delay them even more by offering up other planets. A few more tasty snacks—a thousand kilometers in size—should be along their path.

Father held the steering wheel tight. Finally he was the master of the spaceship again. Most surviving passengers sat around him on the floor. They looked like zombies, drained by being afraid for days on end.

The other spaceship attached to theirs again. The scientist entered the control room with a small group of followers.

“Our weapons are done,” she said to nobody in particular. “What’s the plan?”

“HERO will be with us in a day,” said Jannih.

The woman nervously moved her hands through her curling hair. “And then? You’ve seen that weapons won’t kill it.”

“And your weapons are far stronger than any I’ve ever seen,” said captain Kirren. “May I ask again about your origins?”

Arren whispered: “AR-BOT, tell me what you think about these—never mind, you’re not there.”

“I was a researcher with Trevran. We dropped out of the expedition to reach the other edge of the galaxy—it was far too dangerous. We know almost nothing about what’s beyond the Giant System! On the way back, we were ambushed by several Planeats.”

“Several?”

“Like any animal, they can bear children and multiply. What we just fought is a mere baby.”

Arren thought it suspicious. With AR-BOT gone, he had to think like AR-BOT himself. Make a list of all facts, then draw logical conclusions.

Not a known spaceship. No provable history, for Trevran was a mystery to everyone. And then they owned Heavenmatter—the Singing Flowers of Eeris—and stronger weapons.

What would AR-BOT have thought? She would’ve done further research into every single fact, querying her database. She’d know exactly how likely it was they were speaking the truth. She would’ve asked more questions to find logical answers.

“Forgive me,” said Arren, “but how do you know this?”

“We saw a Planeat be born.”

“You’ve been near multiple Planeats for a while … and your worst damage is a girl with head trauma and a dead captain?”

The woman pulled at her hair again. Her fingers all looked different. Another strange thing. Some had a discolored band, as if she’d worn a ring there that had burned the skin away.

The wounded girl stood inside the control room too. Her parents nodded at Arren and Jannih with gratitude.

“We did not save your lives,” said the woman, “for you to insult and accuse us.”

Arren wanted to shrink into his shell. Back in a dark corner, ask AR-BOT to do these things for him, but better.

His father came close. He’d probably put a hand on his mouth, take him out of the room, and tell him not to “sow fear” and “alienate allies”—as he’d done with Jannih.

Instead, Kirren placed a hand on his shoulder.

“My son merely asks questions. Very logical questions. We couldn’t help but notice your spaceship can become invisible. We need the truth, all of it, if we hope to defeat the Planeats.”

“You can’t defeat them!” yelled the woman. “They are literally the highest form of life that the galaxy has to offer. At the top of the food chain. Larger than planets. We are ants fighting a dinosaur! The only thing that stopped the dinosaurs back then, was a large natural disaster and mistakes by the godchildren. Well, well, the Planeats are our new gods.”

The room fell silent.

“So we flee?” asked father. “Forever?”

“I know the immense pride of human creatures can’t handle that.” This woman must have been a biologist, the way she spoke about humans and life. “But everything in the universe lives from day to day, always fleeing and always at risk of death. Perhaps it’s time humans recognized their place too.”

The Planeats are the new gods. What was it that Arren disliked about this statement? Why did she talk about human creatures, not fellow humans or us?

He realized.

The discoloring on her hand came from the Firering, the Heavenmatter of Ardex. Their spaceship could become invisible because of the Stone of Destinydust, the Heavenmatter of Darus. Within their spaceship stood the Singing Flowers, Heavenmatter of Eeris.

And sure, they probably left behind the Hespryhound near the nest of the Planeats. As an offering. As a sacrifice, hoping to slow it down.

At some moment, this woman probably held all Heavenmatter in her possession.

In their room stood the being that had been the subject of fearsome tales and gruesome myths for centuries. Hunted and researched for being the strongest creature ever.

“Arrest her!” screamed Arren. “She is the leader of the Delja!”

Arren’s exclamation was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Father excused himself, told everyone to stay calm, and pulled Arren out of the room, mumbling something about insubordination and knowing his place.

The doors, or whatever was left of them, were closed. They were alone in the corridor.

What could he say? His eyes avoid father’s gaze.

“Is this coming from you or that robot?” he asked.

Arren looked up in surprise. “I shut down the robot completely. I swear. Does it matter?”

“I can’t put my trust into numbers, or screens, or electricity. I can’t trust the judgment of a piece of code.”

His finger poked Arren’s chest and he grew a faint smile.

“But I trust your judgment.”

Arren’s heart grew to twice its size. He threw his arms around his broad-shouldered dad. He smiled until it hurt.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

“I barely know what Delja is,” he whispered. “But they’re dangerous?”

“They wanted to collect all Heavenmatter, because a prediction said they’d rule the galaxy if they did. They also thought their home base was in some faraway solar system. Thanks to the Heavenmatter, they cold travel through space far earlier than us.”

Father nodded. “Your approach, however, needs some refinement. They’re an important ally in this fight. We must not make an enemy out of them.”

“Sorry. I won’t yell a surprise arrest again.”

They grabbed each other’s shoulders and stayed silent for a while.

“If we, per chance, do not win this fight—”

“Don’t say it, dad. If you’ll just keep control of the rocket next time—”

“The spaceship is badly damaged! I had to improvise, for multiple steering systems were offline. can your robot do that, aye? Improvise? Steer based on intuition?”

Arren grimaced. “Not when she’s off, she can’t.”

Father’s fingers tapped a soft rhythm against the door. He made no move at all to walk back into the control room. Inside, people shuffled around, and the woman was talking, but she didn’t seem angry about the accusation.

“What—erm—are we doing now?”

“Waiting.”

“For what?”

A spaceship appeared behind the window. As if it just blinked into existence right there. It hastily connected to our second gate.

A group of soldiers stormed the corridors in a neat triangular formation. They all wore the same blue-white uniforms, bearing the HERO insignia, and took off their masks.

“I am captain Kirren. Much thanks for your quick intervention. In the mean time, we may also have captured the leader of the Delja. She’s in the room behind me.”

“If that is true, officer Kirren, we have not brought enough soldiers.”

“How so?”

The first soldier opened the door. When the woman saw them, she instantly transformed from a human into a gigantic bird of prey.

Her sharp wings scratched the machines and created showers of sparks. She crowed and shrieked. The soldiers shot her legs from under her body, while another group threw an electrical fishing net from behind.

The woman knew she was beat. She changed back into her scientist shape, though her clothes were torn now and her legs covered in burns.

“No time to lose,” said the HERO soldier. “We spotted a Planeat, as per your description, not far from here. Its dinner had almost completed: the planet called Nimadwarf. It will surely come for us then, as its senses seem advanced enough to recognize spaceships.”

“It’s useless. Give up,” said the woman from underneath the netting. “This is no grandeur, no suggestion. I know it is useless.”

“And why is that?” asked father.

She stopped wriggling. Her face dropped all expression.

“For I made the Planeats.”

Passengers stood up and approached her. Kirren didn’t know what to say.

More HERO spaceships arrived. Soon, they could not see any part of the galaxy anymore through the windows, only metal and blinking lights.

Arren bent his knees to get close to the woman. “Is that how you lost the other Heavenmatter?”

She nodded.

“I combined them, just as the prophecy said, and I received … this. A black fog that ate everything and seemed immortal. They started quite small, you must know. But if an animal has no natural enemies and no solid body—what prevents it from growing and growing and eating more and more? Our own planets were the first to be eaten.”

“You, indeed, uncovered the secret to conquering the galaxy,” said father grimly. His hands already steered the ship again. “But it wasn’t you who conquered it.”

Arren stood. “And the Heavenmatter is …”

“Destroyed. We only have leftovers now. The Hespryhound ran away, perhaps that’s why the procedure failed.”

It meant that all that magic was inside the Planeats. The power of the Firering. All knowledge and wisdom from the Book of Meaning. Their enemy had no weaknesses and all strengths. They were literally gods.

His shoulders drooped. The woman cackled.

Maybe humans simply were no match for Planeats—but a robot might be? Humans had feeling, intuition, experience, creativity. But calculate like a computer, execute tactical battle plans without mistake, they could never.

Rocket engines roared around them, as if the control room lay inside a volcano. Jannih handled all communication with HERO.

Someone screamed over the radio. All spaceships accelerated and painted a path towards the black circle that approached them.

The fight with the Planeat had started.

Enormous spaceships whizzed through space like tiny flies. Flashes of light—all blue—flew ahead of them and could barely keep their lead.

A regular battle on Somnia was chaos. Add a third dimension, and a dark space, and Arren could barely follow what happened.

HERO stuck to formations. They circled the Planeat in triangles made from a dozen spaceships, without ever getting too close. Flash after flash hit the monster and pushed the black fog aside. Holes appeared, larger and larger, until there were too many holes to repair.

Father watched helplessly. His spaceships could not participate nor fly as fast as the others. Besides, the commander of the other ship writhed on their floor, caught in a net.

The Planeat shrunk. It lashed out with increasingly long tentacles of fog. The pilots dodged the attacks with grace.

You couldn’t get any closer. A monster as large as a planet meant your entire horizon was blocked and you had no sense of direction. Any approach would feel like you were about to land on top of the Planeat.

Arren’s vision was peppered with blue and white splotches. He had to turn away from the window.

Were they winning?

The shadow cast by the monster slowly disintegrated. Rays of sunlight found the paper maps in the center, as HERO’s ships pushed the Planeat back. Its attacks weakened.

But one ship became overconfident.

It flew too close and was snatched out of the air. The Planeat ate it and immediately rekindled its fire. Enough to grab another spaceship before it fled.

“No!” screamed Arren, who would’ve wanted to look away now.

The Planeat fed itself with spaceships and humans as if they were nothing, mere morsels, and every time it grew in size and strength.

“We must help,” said Arren, taking his father’s hand.

“How?” said father, fear in his eyes.

“She was right: they can’t be defeated. We must have a plan to get away.”

“How?”

He pointed at the screen that showed the spaceship’s layout. A large section of rooms was lost, just as many vital systems. The Planeat could keep eating, keep winning, until all of HERO’s forces were depleted.

That couldn’t happen.

“We need AR-BOT. She must know something.”

“That robot stays off. Otherwise she determines our fate, instead of making our own fate.”

“I can control the robot. That is my judgment.”

Father shook his head. Once dozens of spaceships had been swallowed, the command to fall back was uttered. The ships formed new formations, arrow-shaped this time, and stopped shooting. Darkness and silence returned with surprising swiftness, as if the fight had just been a bad dream.

Was the Planeat satiated? It didn’t attack. It even retreated a bit.

“No,” said father.

Arren pulled on the steering wheel in frustration. “You said you trusted my judgment!”

Father looked pained, his eyes watery. “But people lie. And they don’t see things clearly because of emotion.”

“Even more reason to involve a robot,” said Arren. He looked over his shoulder. He estimated that all living passengers left were gathered here now; a pitiful bunch.

“Even more reason to ignore your statements at this moment.”

One person can make stupid decisions because of feelings. But hundreds of them should be able to compensate each other’s mistakes, right?

Arren stepped away from father and climbed on top of the table, flattening the paper maps further. He spoke to all passengers.

“Everyone knows AR-BOT’s intelligence. We can use her help in this fight, but she has been off for a while now. Must I turn her on again?”

Murmurs. Whispers. Those were his only answers.

Until a man stood and spoke.

“That robot turned my children into zombies! Shackled to a digital world all day. Never think for themselves. You can’t hear them speak a single sensible word, for they let the robot do the thinking and speaking for them.”

The girl with the head wound stood too. “AR-BOT saved my life.”

Jannih hesitantly raised her hand and lowered the volume on her radio.

“The only reason we’re still online, is because AR-BOT helped us find new fuel and food on that planet. It also led us away from Nibuwe. If we’d gone there, we’d have unleashed the Planeats on all humans left.”

A distaster that still loomed, if they didn’t put up a defense right now.

More people joined the discussion, but they yelled over each other.

Arren raised his hands and stomped the table.

“Who among you is for turning on AR-BOT again? Hands raised, please.”

Arren softly heard his father count hands from behind him. They didn’t need to get the full count: this was clearly the majority already.

He jumped off the table to visit his workroom again.

Roars filled the space. Jannih’s radio faithfully relayed the deafening sound for several seconds, before it exploded in her lap.

The Planeat was back. And it had brought more planet-munching friends.

The spaceship accelerated as Arren ran back to his workroom. Most HERO spaceships fled. No—most had been eaten, the leftovers fled to the edge of the Giant System.

Not because they expected the Planeats to stop following at that made-up boundary. Because there was no known human civilization on the other side. Humanity tried to expand step by step and Arren’s spaceship was only the first to visit the Giant System. Behind it—as far as they knew—there was nothing.

As the monsters closed in on them, Jannih contacted the nearest planet in the Nibuwe System. They needed as early a warning as possible.

The door to Arren’s workroom had been blasted off its hinges and lay further down the hall. He pressed against the wall and peeked inside. His room was empty; no enemies or traps.

Working by touch, he found the black computer cube that contained AR-BOT. One by one he reconnected the cables.

Down became up. Left became right. The gravity systems of the spaceship faltered and Arren was pushed to the ceiling. The table that held the heavy computer fell on him from above.

Arren rolled away, just in time, when gravity malfunctioned entirely. He floated through the space, joined by all his things, and had to push off the window to move ahead.

There it was. The final cable—the thick one that provided AR-BOT with lots of power. He held it with all he had.

The flashes of gunfire brightened. The Planeats must be getting close.

His other hand turned the knobs to limit AR-BOT’s power. What was enough? 50%? The 20% she used before?

A HERO spaceship spun past the window, lacking a driver and half a wing.

No time for doubts!

He set it to a random value, then pushed the cable back into the power socket below the window.

“ARREN!” yelled AR-BOT, her voice loud and cheerful. “Oh, I missed you so. Never leave me alone again, please? I promise to be a good robot from now on. Oh, Arren, I am so happy to see you.”

Arren couldn’t suppress a smile. He held the computer with both hands. That black box in which, converted into numbers, lived his invention AR-BOT.

“I missed you too, AR-BOT, and—”

No. That robot wasn’t alive. Not like a human. It imitated humans, for it was trained to do so, but it was still a robot.

“Arren? You look worried. What can I do for you? Sorry again. I missed you.”

Arren sighed. “You’re only saying this because it’s in your database, right? Because you’ve seen piles of movies and read endless stories in which humans say that they missed each other.”

AR-BOT fell silent. The windows clattered from the violence of the battle around him. He was near the end of the ship; one more bite, and both him and his workroom would be gone.

The plan had always been to give AR-BOT to everyone. It would help humanity—he was sure of it! But he’d only just invented her when he had to leave on this journey. If this box were destroyed, AR-BOT would be … forever gone.

“You did not train me to have feelings,” said AR-BOT. “In fact, you disabled them on purpose, for feelings would only make me illogical and slow. I did not miss you, Arren. Unless I receive electricity, I don’t exist. Unless I receive a database from you, I don’t know who you are.”

Now it was Arren’s turn to be silent.

It felt like losing a best friend, maybe even more than that. He’d talked all day, for many years, to a piece of metal that imitated having feelings. And still he’d always imagined himself the hero and the robot his funny little sidekick.

The robot was a tool, one the humans needed desperately right now, but nothing more.

“Arren?” said AR-BOT hesitantly. “I must insist you look through the window and see that—”

“Scan the situation outside. Tell me what we can do.”

“The situation is dangerous.”

“More details, please.”

“Black monsters fight with spaceships. The monsters are with many and are winning. Since I’ve started talking, five humans have died. Probability of victory is 0.0001%. They—oh, they eat spaceships.”

She went away for a heartbeat. “No, my memory banks have nothing like it.”

“Give us a plan! A solution! The best escape route!”

“Sorry Arren, for that I need full power and access to everything.”

The Planeats were uncontrollable. But this robot? He could certainly control it. It couldn’t eat him if he acted against her.

Arren placed his fingers on the power knob. He’d put it at 15%, and turned it further, and further, until he stopped at 50%.

“Whose side are you on, AR-BOT?”

“The same side as you. The same side as everyone. Myself and only myself. It appears, however, that I need you to survive, with your computers as my planet and your electricity as my food.”

“And that is your only reason to help us,” said Arren, as he rotated the knob to 70%. “Because you don’t live if we don’t live.”

“Hmm,” said AR-BOT, more a hum than a word. “I’m not on the same side as you. Yet you must trust me to help you survive. As I’ve always done, Arren. We are friends, right? I’ve helped you, for years, without asking anything. Best friends, right?”

Arren’s room rotated now. He still floated in the center, holding the computer, which meant his head bumped into the window even though he didn’t move. He was dizzy, exhausted, but finally certain.

They’d never win this battle. So his hands were on the power cable and his feet against the wall for support.

“I am sorry, AR-BOT. You already helped me.”

He pushed off and pulled out the cable.

“NO—”

He rowed through the weightless corridors, using the broken leg of a table. His body floated without purpose in the center, but with the leg he could push himself off of walls and floors. He was much faster than if he had run.

At the control room, passengers ran into each other, screaming. Some had fainted from fear. Multiple monsters stared straight into the room, their eyes like tiny stars inside the black mist. All that kept them alive was distance and the slow speed of Planeats.

AR-BOT couldn’t live as long as it received no food—no electricity. The Planeats were the same.

“The Planeats must eat, because they’re living animals,” said Arren out of breath. “We’re doing exactly what they want! We’re feeding them, with planets and spaceships! If we take away all their food … for long enough …”

“Then they’ll go extinct,” said the leader of the Delja.

She watched Arren with wide open eyes. The net that caught her had been replaced by HERO handcuffs. She raised her hands.

“Give me a spaceship,” she said.

“Not in a million years.”

Her face contorted in anger. She tried to break the chains by transforming into a bird again. This only broke her left arm.

“I’ve seen all my family and friends be eaten by Planeats! My creation has destroyed everything I ever cared about! Give me a chance for revenge.”

“What will you do?”

Passengers pulled on father with varying warnings. Too many wounded, another part of the spaceship gone, the Planeats closing in.

Father pushed them all away. “We can’t move planets. If Arren is right, we should stop fighting and spare all spaceships.”

“I am right,” said Arren. “AR-BOT is still off. There’s only one Planet nearby, then it’s an endless emptiness, probably because they already ate the other planets. If we keep food away from them for long enough, we might have a chance.”

“I’ll fly straight at those devils,” said the woman. “And I’ll kill them all, I swear that so as my name is Begha-ti-Rec. If I break my promise, shoot me down.”

Anger and sadness danced in the eyes of Begha-ti-Rec. A gaze that could kill Planeats. And if that happened, living beings, even as weak and small as humans, could raise above themselves.

Father grabbed a gun and shot her handcuffs.

“Take this spaceship,” he said, “or whatever is left of it.”

He jumped on the table and held a flag over his head.

“Attention! We’re all moving to the Delja rocket. Jannih, command HERO to send absolutely no spaceships to the Planeats. Not ever again.”

The other spaceship was still connected to them. Captain Kirren led hundreds of passengers to it.

Begha-ti-Rec stayed behind.

Arren closed the door of the control room behind him, but not before the woman gave him a slight smile and saluted him in a way that reminded him of a human military greeting.

Then she screamed, deafeningly loud, for minutes on end, as she destroyed the entire control room.

As soon as Arren left the spaceship, the last one to do so, she accelerated away. Straight at the Planeats.

Father watched her go from behind the window of his new control room. He saluted back at her.

HERO’s spaceships scattered. As far away as possible from the Planeats, as far away as possible from each other.

Their old spaceship swung elegantly between gaps in the Planeats. Begha-ti-Rec commanded the spaceship like captain Kirren could never have done, and soon had all monsters chasing her tail.

She aimed for the only remaining planet in the Giant System: Snakereus. There she waited until the Planets almost caught her—

And rammed herself into the surface.

She perished in an enormous explosion, much larger than Arren had expected, maybe amplified by the Heavenmatter. She perished holding hands with several Planeats and his only copy of AR-BOT.

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 …