Oberon’s surface was nothing but geological desolation. Asteroids and comets of the first ages had dug huge blue craters on the butchered red coat. Chasmatas weaved across its sparse envelope, surrounding under-dome cities as the dark moon was inhabited despite its nights as long as a decade.

“We’re not colonizing planets. We’re killing them,” Ali sighed from the hold, her forehead against the airlock’s window. “And look at all these shipwrecks!”

Indeed. Oberon’s orbit was a graveyard. The solar storms that constantly swept the area had disastrous consequences. The radio’s canals were nothing but interferences, void demons whispering profanities to the unbidden traveler.

“I don’t think that’s what Shakespeare had in mind when writing A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” I commented while turning on the front beams to navigate between the wrecks and the rock fields. “It’s not Fairyland, it’s the hellish Purgatory.”

“What would a cyborg do here?” my partner asked between two alarms alerting us from incoming solar winds. “It’s suicidal with all this radiation!”

Our destination was in sight at the coordinates indicated. However, it wasn’t detected by any of the instruments driven mad by the charged particles’ streams. Hidden under a metallic half-moon in the shape of a bell, the mysterious planetoid made of anarchic yet geometric masses of giant oxidized bismuth squared crystals shone with a thousand colors despite the lack of natural light. These mineralogical configurations could only be obtained by artificial synthesis.

“Damn… It’s beautiful!” I heard my human commented. “Do you live here?”

“I was born here,” the Data Maiden replied after she had progressively regained consciousness in our bed. She kept talking through the speakers as she was still linked to the control computer to keep her alive. “This curious pyramidal formation is called Fairyland. It was assembled by the data broker who made me what I am today. And the same broker still hides hither.”

The rainbow-colored bismuth, however diamagnetic, didn’t repel the metallic hull of the Kitty. On the contrary, I had the feeling that a tractor beam was at work and guided us to the center of the artificial shimmering satellite.

“And this data broker plays for the Technocratic Marine?” I asked. I had in mind the military message.

“In the past, yes,” replied Zéphyr. “But he also worked for a wide range of corporations specialized from cybernetics to data manipulation.”

“Have we heard of this guy?” questioned my human as I jumped from the cockpit between two extension cables.

“No, I don’t think so… his name… Man—Mancéphalius—” Zéphyr stuttered, whose words were beginning to fade again. She slowly opened her white eyes which didn’t gleam as strong as they used to. “Once there—” As her voice disappeared, the control computer alerted us via the lateral monitor that the cyborg’s vital functions were at a new low. It had initiated a procedure to keep her in stasis for the next few hours.

Gripping Zéphyr’s hand, Ali allowed herself one tear as the Kitty was magnetically anchored on Fairyland’s surface.

 

Shortly afterwards, my partner and I set foot on the ground; both equipped with our spacesuit. My sapiens held our companion’s inert body in her arms. The Maiden was under respiratory assistance using a compressed air cylinder borrowed from the ship’s reserve.

“Do you see an entrance somewhere?” I asked through the radio’s interference as I climbed a wall of iridescent bismuth illuminated by the torchlight of Ali’s helmet.

The colored surface of Fairyland was a succession of pyramids and ravines in which I could lose sight of my copilot very quickly. Unfortunately, we had little time to explore this mineral marvel, because, as the computer had warned us, the cyborg already covered with a thin layer of ice appeared to be between life and death.

The void demons went silence allowing my partner to reach me behind a cerulean hill casting a green shadow above a large square hole, which shades spiraled from red to yellow. “Lee? Look! A light!” she announced, pointing to a spark flying over a cube of bluish gold on the other side. There, the strange firefly hovered a few centimeters from the ground, stealthily searching for something on the celestial body’s surface.

Once we crossed another crevasse shaped like a huge satellite dish, we managed to follow it. After a few minutes of walking and climbing, the curious will-o’-the-wisp stopped, facing the high smooth rampart of an iridescent rectangular building. This one was almost invisible, lost in an optical illusion and the anarchic configuration of the place. After standing still for a couple of seconds, the light finally touched the wall before disappearing through.

“Do you think she was a fairy?” I asked, skeptical.

Ali shrugged. “How would I know?” she replied, after checking on Zéphyr. “Unfortunately, this is a blind alley.”

“I don’t think so.” Curious, I had stretched out the right foreleg to palpate this strange wall with kaleidoscopic reflections. My paw met no resistance and passed through, mimicking the will-o’-the-wisp. I didn’t, however, face an illusion for I felt a cold caress against my suit. When I introduced my head, it was like swimming in metal. I had just traveled through matter. “Come!” I said to Ali once on the other side.

I had no feedback. The wall blocked the radio links—both the void and Ali were silent. Fortunately, she joined me seconds later.

“Holy shit! That was mega-weird,” she grimaced. “I felt like a ghost for a brief moment.”

“Who you gonna call?” I joked. “But if you think it’s absurd, check this out, partner.” We had landed on a terrace made of iridescent metal and black rock overlooking titanic alveolus. From them flew the same fireflies at a frantic pace. There were hundreds of millions of them, and yet everything seemed so silent. “We’ve just found Fairyland, right?” I asked looking for a way down.

“I believe those are data,” said Ali, following a spark that floated around her head. “I feel like we’re inside a huge hard drive.”

“How can you tell?” I went on as one of her sisters approached my snout before I kicked her out.

“These things are information. They whisper… It’s incomprehensible, but they talk to each other.”

I couldn’t hear anything. Maybe it was a human gift. Still, we had no way to move through this colossal hive because no stairs nor elevators could be found. “Do you know where Mancéphalius is?” I candidly asked to one of the fairies on my muzzle. The discourteous pixie never answered.

“We can float down,” Ali said, looking at his monitor. “There’s no gravity.”

Her wrist computer also indicated the presence of a breathable atmosphere. Like me, my human lifted the glass visor from her helmet. We were both able to inhale a hot and dry air. Under my pads freed from their slippers, I felt the pulsations of an electric current running through the lukewarm metal. Already perspiring, my sapiens approached the ledge, being careful not to slip inadvertently. At the bottom, we could perceive a chasm in which some bold pixies of light rushed into.

“Do the flying elves also whisper you to jump?” I asked her.

She glanced at me, raising an eyebrow. “Chickening?”

As Ali let herself go, I bravely imitated her. The fireflies began to soar close to us; especially towards Zéphyr. Some of them settled on her while my partner struggled to push them back. It was soon a cloud of sparks around them.

“Ali? I don’t want to assume the responsibility of being a killjoy—which usually is my reason to live—but, this time, I truly don’t like what’s going on,” I meowed.

“Oh, really?” she answered before loudly blowing a fairy out. “Then, don’t look beneath.”

“What do you mean?”

We were thirty meters deep in the abyss when, far beneath us, a curious metallic statue shaped like a sapiens emerged from a colorful wall which turned to be liquid on this particular spot. Still stuck mid-belly into the matter, the idol shivered and started moving its arms.

“By the 79 moons of Jupiter, what is that nightmarish thing—Ali! I’d like to go back up! Can we go back up?” I meowed, trying to grab my partner’s boot.

“Impossible,” my human replied. She had drawn her weapon, but confronting this mannequin of bismuth didn’t spark joy in my mind. “The abyss attracts us to it.”

The guardian of the precipice’s features suddenly convulsed to mold a woman’s body and face devoid of any visible emotion. “Ali? This is the last time I let you take a decision, girl—oh God! It’s coming! Shoot her or something!”

“You’re overacting. It could be Mancéphalius…” Ali replied as this curious metal nymph had jumped to intercept us before her right arm transformed into a sharp blade! “Oh, fuck!” my partner swore, pulling the trigger five times. The bullets took random trajectories before getting lost in the giant hive or froze in front of their unruffled target, making my hair stand on end.

The scary android was only three meters from us when an artificial and genderless voice of imperial calm made my stomach tremble. It came from everywhere and nowhere at once. “Titania. Enough,” it said. Curiously, the bismuth nymph stopped and turned to probe the void before the voice coached: “Zéphyr is here. Bring her back to me, Titania.” The woman nodded. Her weapon disappearing into her sparkling skin, she slowly flew to Ali. She then greeted us with a smile and gently grasped the metal body of our friend before silently inviting us to follow her.

“I told you. You were overacting,” my copilot dared to say with a quivering voice.

I didn’t answer on the spot as my mind froze, trying to figure how I could get away with this ditz mallrat’s murder. “Indeed,” my diplomatic—but hypocrite—wired brain replied.

Down in the hole, the temperature soared and I suffered martyrdom. Unable to perspire like human beings, I had to pull out my tongue and my papillae dried immediately. Without my suit and its thermal fluid, I would have been dead before I reached the den of that curious lifesaving voice. Sweat also invaded the space combination of my sapiens who, in this oven, had to remove it. Once in the stifling depths, she took off her second black skin, then her underwear that she threw into this endless pit. The Desert Eagle was the only thing she kept with her.

Titania led us to the heart of the shady asteroid, in a huge oval iridescent chamber about a hundred meters in diameter. Everywhere flew these little fairies of information. They would sometimes land on a super-black titanium quartz sphere, four times larger than my human, standing in the room’s center just below the precipice we fell from. It looked like a black hole, with its veil of gold flickering on its unfathomable surface.

“Greetings, Children of the Genome,” said the peaceful voice. It came from this curious mineral egg.

“Yo!” casually started my partner, floating between the flying sparks to stand in front of the talking ball. “We’re Ali and…”

A glimmer ignited the sphere’s gleaming mist. “I do know who you are. And I do know why you came.”

A bed of white steel materialized on the pearly floor beneath, and rose to us. Positioning itself between the ominous globe and us, it welcomed Zéphyr shortly after the bismuth nymph had placed her delicately on its reflective surface.

“We’re looking for Mancéphalius,” I said, feeling like a consciousness was watching each of our movements. “According to Zéphyr, it’s a data broker.”

“I am Mancéphalius. The AI you are looking for,” the voice uttered.

Not without glancing at the synthetic woman. Ali sat on the edge of Zéphyr’s stone mattress. “Zéphyr asked us to come here,” she confided, her hand on the androgyne’s cheek. “She told us you could help.”

Gently repelling my human, the mysterious bed folded in on itself, enclosing the Maiden’s half-body. Straightening before floating a little further on our side, it created an oval cocoon after Titania applied her palms against the vibrating surface.

“I cannot thank you enough for bringing my child back to me,” Mancéphalius went on.

“Your child?” My head was full of questions about this unusual place, but it was the only one I could formulate. Taking me into her arms despite the heat, my partner was as confused as me.

“Zéphyr came to me years ago,” our host explained. “He used to be called Hermes. He was an Arch-Prince—a God from Lunapolis.”

My heart stopped but I was brought back to life a second later when Ali almost crushed my fragile body against her chest. “What the fuck did you just say?” she roared, letting me go.

“You—you’re pretty talkative for a data broker,” I coughed after catching my breath. “That information could get us all killed. And—and the Moon wouldn’t be the one gutting you first, fool of an AI.”

Mancéphalius’s golden veil glittered before dissipating. It evaporated into a small spark of light. The latter escaped towards its sisters arriving through the chimney. “I would never have allowed myself to divulge the true identity of Hermes without his consent.”

“Bring the big white avocado back,” Ali coldly ordered, cocking her gun. “Right. Now.”

“What for?” Mancéphalius inquired. The whole room started humming as if someone turned on a whimsical AC; except it got hotter. “I reckon your heart is made of fire, Ali Koviràn. It saved your life in Xiao’s lair, but it will also lead to your demise.”

My sapiens shouted, pointing the weapon towards Mancéphalius. She didn’t realize Titania had rushed behind her, the blade of her arm just a millimeter away from my partner’s pumping carotid.

“It was while he tried to escape the Lunar cathedral of madness that Hermes destroyed his fleshly envelope,” explained Mancéphalius. “Fleeing the Ivory Halls, the Arch-Prince died even before reaching my door—begging for help—and became Zéphyr even before I made her what she is today. You and I never met the God of the Omega, dear Ali and Lee. You and I only know Zéphyr.”

My human had approached our curious host, pushing from her fingertips the new pixies appearing in the golden mist. “Is she going to be okay?” she muttered while throwing her weapon.

“I am doing the best I can,” said the AI, with little reassurance as my sapiens and I moved closer to the cocoon. “It is uncertain for now.”