Twilight Serenade

126 Years After the Launch of the starship Salient

The marred and broken remains of many starships slowly rotated above the swirling red clouds of a gas giant. The largest were insignificant specks painted above the planets turbulent red wind whipped clouds. However, one was different and even in its smallness it was majestic. Nearly one thousand kilometers high and wide, the perfectly shaped semi-transparent cube glowed and hummed with remembered power. Script letters flowed across all sides of the cube, spelling out her name, the Salient. For thousands of meters around her, the other junk bumped, jiggled and wobbled in unsteady degrading orbits.

The soul of a poet wrapped up in the heart of a machine the living AI of the Salient thought to herself as she pondered her situation. The main reactors had been shut down. Weapons, shields, life support, and many other systems had been removed. What little equipment had been left seemed just enough to leave her aware, able to watch and ponder but no more. If only, she thought to herself but then stopped. There was no more time for "if only". What does one do at the end when the spiral of time leads to its ultimate conclusion? Fear was a natural reaction, but the Salient did not want to fear. Fear was ugly, instinctive, and she wanted more than that for the end.

Changing the orientation of her sensors, she watched the multiple points of impact as junk- mere things- were pulled in by the gas giant and then a short time later flared as they burned up. The show reminded her of an ancient Earth custom called 'fireworks' at the end of a baseball game or on the 4th of July. Her memory banks were full of ancient memories. Sadly the roar and excitement of the crowds wwas missing. The moment felt empty, needing to be filled by music. A symphony that could be heard in the vacuum of existence. Excited for a moment at the prospect of having a purpose, however brief, she turned all of the power of her internal resources to computing the orbits of the junk and coordinating a musical score based on their points of impact. Meaning is always important, and she wanted a jarring conclusion to her symphony, just before her own point of impact. There was no chance that her friends would ever hear it, but what is life if not a gamble. If an afterlife existed, her friend Zeffa would hear.

Caught up in her work, she no longer thought of the end. Violins, trumpets, oboes fought and struggled and screeched, reaching, struggling toward the ending that had to come. Now gentle, now rough, sometimes caressing and sometimes grating, their music rode the storm waves created by the universe itself. Compressing the data stream and encoding it into light itself, the Salient prepared to broadcast her final creation out into the universe at large. Just before the point of impact, she hit her own self-destruct and blew her last creation out and away.

Her twilight serenade blazed through the depths of space. Hundreds of light years away a curious scientist began to study the anomaly. On a world named Favor, removed by many years, a scientist decoded the Salient's last message. The hearts and minds of the people of Favor turned upward to the stars, knowing they had made contact with intelligent life. The alien music danced through their world and the mystery of its abrupt silence at the end.

*********** TO BE CONTINUED IN THE STORY TAINTED RAINBOW *************

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