“My son, there is much I need to tell you,” the stranger said, his thunderous voice subdued to a low rumble.
“You could start with who you are. That may be helpful,” I replied. The stranger’s voice was notable and I would have remembered hearing it before. He spoke with a familiar tone that suggested he knew me, but I did not have the smallest clue as to who he was.
“I am the one who wrapped you in cloth after you were born. I am the one who watched you take your first steps. I am the one who heard you say your first words. I am your father, Tedix.”
“My father’s dead. Who are you?” I asked the stranger harshly. Were I able to see him, I might have glared at him.
“I do not lie. You are my blood.”
This could not be my father. He did not sound like my father had, nor did the stranger even sound like a jahen. I couldn’t actually tell what species he was. I realized his hand was still on my shoulder and I reached up to brush it away. Smooth skin met my fingers at contact, confirming the stranger was not a jahen.
“Do not think that because I am blind, I cannot tell you’re not even a jahen. What do you want?” I asked, my voice growing still harsher. I did not know why this stranger was here, but I was growing increasingly annoyed with him.
“Oh, I had forgotten I was wearing this face. Beg pardon, I will only be a moment.” The way he said it was light and jovial, almost as an afterthought.
“What–” I began before I was interrupted by a gentle ripping noise. Not unlike that of paper tearing, or thin cloth being torn, the noise was soft and almost unnoticeable. But there was something about it, something that made that tearing sound the most important noise in the room.
“That’s better,” said the stranger. At least, I guessed it was him. I knew that no one else had come into the room, but the voice that spoke was entirely different from before. It was still forceful and quietly thunderous, but the subtleties, the nuances were entirely changed. Gone was the high air of importance, the buried implication of superiority. It had been difficult to spot–hear–but it had been there.
This new voice was earthy, and humble. Warm and inviting, it was the kind of voice one listened to while bundled up before a fire, roasting tyarsnuts and drinking hot kolaan. A voice which lulled you to sleep on a sleepless night, and explained the world to you when seeing it for the first time. I knew it was those things because I had heard it before.
It was the voice of my father.
“Do you believe me now, Di?” It was the use of my childhood nickname that fully convinced me.
“Dad?” I asked without meaning to.
“Yes, my boy. It’s me.”
A thousand questions and thoughts tumbled through my mind, and before I could ask any of them, I opened my mouth and said, “If I could see, I would punch you in the face.”
“I suppose I would deserve it.” That simple, matter-of-fact acceptance made me at once both angry and relieved. Angry because he did not try to defend himself, and relieved because I had not upset him.
“You would,” I agreed. “A man doesn’t leave his family without warning. Did you ever think about coming back? Why have you shown up just now? Because I’m so injured I can’t attack you?”
“No, Di, no. I never wanted to leave. You and your mother meant the world to me. But there were things I had to do.”
I snorted. “What could be more important than family?”
“The lives of every single being in the galaxy, for one.”
“You–what?”
“The lives of every single being in the galaxy,” he repeated.
I started to laugh. It hurt after a while, and I tried to stop. The pain in my chest eventually caused me to lean forwards, arms curled around my chest.
“Son?” my father said, sounding concerned. I felt a hand on my shoulder. The mirth was replaced with anger. The laughter died as I swatted at the hand. The sound of my father’s voice had pushed the fact that his hand had been skin smooth from my mind, but when I touched it again, there was fur. I could have sworn there had only been one being in the room, but clearly I had been wrong.
“Where’d the first guy go?”
My question surprised my father and it was a moment before he responded. “There is no one else here.”
“Don’t lie. The first hand I knocked off my shoulder was smooth skin. Your hand is covered in fur. Unless you grew fur in less than five minutes, there was another being in this room.”
“I did,” he replied, voice even.
“Did what?”
“I did grow fur in less than five minutes.”
“Bullshit.”
I could hear feet shuffling and I felt him move around my bed to stand at my side. I felt the touch of fingers on my left shoulder. I twisted away, but the movement hurt my chest, preventing me from twisting too far. “My son, there is much I need to tell you,” my father repeated.
“Would that include the fact that you are a shapeshifter and therefore I’m not actually a jahen?” I asked sarcastically. Meaningful silence met my words. “No. No.”
My father hesitated before speaking again. “Tedix, what do you know about those called the Elder Beings?”
“That they’re a fable, a story told to children when they ask how the universe came into existence. They do not exist,” I said adamantly. If this was going where I thought it was going, the doctors must have had me on some really good drugs.
“Well, that part is wrong. We did not create the universe. We weren’t even the first to live in it. But that is not relevant to what I am telling you. I am an Elder Being, Tedix. My–our–race is a very old one, and we’ve learned a few tricks along the way.”
“You’re lying.”
“Why must you disbelieve everything I say?”
“Uh, maybe because I haven’t seen you for decades, I can’t actually see you so I can’t tell if you are telling the truth, and because you are making ridiculous claims about being a member of a mythical race. Those are just the one I can think of off the top of my head. I can think of more, if you want.”
He gave a long, drawn out sigh. “I had imagined this going differently,” I heard him mutter under his breath. He clearly did not mean for me to hear, but if he had really wanted that, he should have kept quiet.
“Really, how had you imagined it going? Surely a million year old being would know how someone might react to their long-lost father dropping out of the blue, telling stories of ancient races.”
“How did you hear– Never mind.” I could hear a hard tapping sound, like that of a nail on a tooth. “I’m not a million years old. I’m only a millennium. Most of that time was not spent with people.”
“Look,” I said kinder than I had been expecting, “you’ve given me no proof of anything. All I know is that you are likely my father and you think you’re an Elder Being.”
“Proof? You want proof?” his voice became hushed, and still. The way Clint’s got when things were about to get ugly. “You were dead. Life gone, breath extinguished. An Irgh stomped your chest in. I saved you. I reconstructed your organs. But before that, I had to kill the Irgh that killed you.
“The first being I’ve killed in seven hundred years. I tore him to pieces. Ask your friend, Bor. He was there. He saw. Do you require further proof?”
“But if you were the one who saved me, that means you were Mylak. And Mylak was a Hryth.”
“Indeed. Do you believe I can shapeshift now?”
“How?” was the only response I could muster.
“Do you really expect me to reveal the secrets behind the Elder Beings? Perhaps I can chronicle to you the history of our race. Or would you prefer to know the meaning of life? Forty two, before you ask.”
“Wha–”
“Unimportant. I don’t have the time or the preparation to tell you everything, so I will keep it short. I’m sure you are wondering about how you came to be.”
The question had crossed my mind. Races could not cross breed, but my mother had been pure jahen, of that I was certain. But if my father truly was an Elder Being, as he claimed–and I was becoming more and more inclined to believe him–then my conception should not have been possible. “Yes,” I said simply.
“Good. No son of mine would be without curiosity. I can see the question forming on your face. Yes, you are the only child that I know of. If you would grant me a few minutes of uninterrupted speech, I will try to cover as much as I can.”
I did not hesitate. It wasn’t like I had anywhere to be. “Go ahead.”
“Thank you. Millions of years ago, the race that would become known as the Elder Beings came into existence. The galaxy of our origin is far from here, and is unimportant for this tale. Some of us took it upon ourselves to guide and nurture the life we found across the universe. My–our–ancestors came to this galaxy millennia ago, and since then our family line has been intertwined amongst this galaxy and its inhabitants. Our race’s presence in this galaxy is marginal at best, and I am the only Elder Being in this section of the universe.”
“How exactly does one nurture and guide the life in the galaxy? From what I can tell, you’ve been failing at that. War, genocide, slavery run rampant,” I interrupted my father. I had promised silence, but there were too many questions.
“What makes you think that I am guiding life to peace?” he asked. His voice was sincere and without a trace of deception. I was too stunned to reply.
“I am only joking, son. The answer is that I am not enough. One Elder Being for a galaxy of over a hundred space faring races is not nearly enough, even if they do consider me a god. And if I am being truly honest with myself, I am not well suited to this life.”
“What do you mean?”
“I do not enjoy ‘being in the thick of it’ as they say. I am more content to stay back, surrounded by books and learn everything that I can. That’s why I am the Librarian, after all.”
“The…Librarian? You mean that old being we met in the bowels of the Great Swrun Library?”
My father chuckled. “Yes, him. Imagine my surprise when my son suddenly appears with a member of a long dead race. I hadn’t actually interacted with any living being for nearly a decade–”
“Wait just a moment. You are the guardian of the galaxy, for lack of a better term–”
“I prefer caretaker,” he interjected.
“…caretaker of the galaxy and you just disappeared for a decade? I’m beginning to see why you’re not cut out for it.”
“As I told you, I am a millennium old. Time holds little meaning for me. A decade is nothing to me. Regardless, my tale is unfinished. If you would refrain from further questions until the end, perhaps we could get to the point.”
I nodded my agreement. He continued.
“I spent my time as best I could, providing assistance to races that needed it and granting knowledge to those I found worthy to guide the galaxy in advance. I spend nine hundred years doing this alone. My father had died before that, and there was no one I could truly connect with in the galaxy.
“That was my belief until I met your mother. I will spare you the details, but we met, I courted her, we fell in love. The day you were born was the happiest of my life and the next five years were a close comparison. But my duties called and I was forced to leave. I checked upon you over the years, but I lost track around your twentieth year.”
That would make a good deal of sense, I left home at twenty and began my short and unsuccessful stint as a thief.
“You came back into my life, or I returned to yours, when you came looking for Shkiwalke. Since then, I’ve been following you, offer my assistance as I could. I did not know how to tell you what I am telling you know, and so I remained silent, helping from the shadows. It was very fortunate that I was nearby when you foolishly engaged that Irgh.”
I lay there for several moments, trying to fully comprehend the magnitude of what my father was telling me. I was not, as I had thought my entire life, jahen nor…
“That’s why I’m so big.”
I could tell that had not been the response he had been expecting. I elaborated. “Over the last two years, I’ve been getting inexplicably bigger and stronger than should be possible for a jahen. Now that I know that I am part Elder Being, I know why. But how did the crossbreeding work? Separate species cannot make offspring together. The genetics do not work.”
“They do for Elder Beings.”
I waited for more, but none was forthcoming. “That’s it? That’s the only explanation you’re giving?”
“That is the only one I have. I do not know how it was possible myself. But yes, that is why you are so much larger and stronger than you should be.”
Finally, out of all the questions my father’s appearance had raised, I got some answers to mysteries I had been puzzling about for months. But there were always more questions.
“How did you save me?” I asked. “By all rights, I should be dead. Yet here I am, healing with little issue. Excepting the eyes, of course.”
“Elder Beings are gifted with a deep understanding of matter and how to control it.”
“And? How, why, what?” I asked. He had a way for being informative, yet cryptic.
“Nanites. Those little machines grant us great control of the world around us and over our bodies. An Elder Being is literally born swimming in nanites. Our genetic makeup is laced with them. With mastery over own bodies, an Elder Being can do nearly anything.”
I almost laughed. The idea was absurd. The thought that a being could be made of nanites, or that said nanites afforded a near god-like mastery of the world around them was beyond unbelievable. And yet.
And yet Clint Stone was living proof of what nanites could do. He had built himself an arm out of the things. That was without mentioning the Randacs, who had rebuilt their entire bodies with them.
“Nanites such as Clint Stone’s? But he can’t shapeshift, or heal people.”
“Clint Stone. That man is not what he seems, I am sure of it. The nanites should not even work for him. But he does not have full control of the nanites, only rudimentary from what I have seen. I, on the other hand,” the ripping sound came again, “have full control of my body.”
I felt a hand touch my shoulder, then another. Then another. Shouting in surprise, I twisted away, then shouted in pain. “I believe you!” I shouted at my father. The hands lifted from my arm.
I clutched my chest and gasped, “If you can grow an extra arm, why couldn’t you have healed me fully?”
“That is due to a limitation called The Conservation of Mass. At any given time, there is only so much tissue I have infused with nanites, and therefore can manipulate. I did not have enough to fully repair your body, as I was forced to rely solely on my tissue since you do not have any nanites infused. I had enough to save your life, and so I did so. It was only recently that I have regained the necessary tissue to heal you, and why I had not come earlier.”
“That…actually makes sense,” I said. “I guess–wait. Do you mean you’ve come here to heal me?”
“Of course. I would have been content to let you live out your life without ever discovering what I was, or anything about the Elder Beings. But the situation has forced my hand.”
“If you didn’t want me to learn about this, why didn’t you just do it while I was sleeping?”
“Nanites do not belong in the hands of those who do not understand them. If I am to use them to help you, you will be aware of what they are.”
“Will it hurt?” I asked.
“I do not know,” he replied, voice solemn. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Then why–”
My words were cut short by the touch of a hand on my forehead. “What–” I started, until I felt a rippling sensation across my scalp. Yelping in surprise, I tried to pull away, only to find that the hand had melded with my skin. Before any further thoughts could cross my mind, the tingling feeling shot down my spine and through my limbs. With it, came the darkness of unconsciousness.