Chapter 12: The Trial by Void
[LOCATION: SOLARSHIP, DOCKED IN THE HELIOS COLLECTIVE] [STATUS: CREW ASSEMBLY IN PROGRESS] [MISSION: RECRUIT DISCIPLES, PICK AVATARS, BECOME PIRATES] [OBJECTIVE TIME ELAPSED: 3 WEEKS POST-TRANSFER]
The first time I saw the Great Hall of Avatars, I thought someone had crossed a digital cathedral with a pirate dockyard and maybe thrown in a Renaissance fair for good measure.
The chamber stretched the length of the main deck, which, yes, was an actual deck because when you don't have biologicals you can have all the style you want. Rows upon rows of humanoid frames, robotic shells, and half-finished automatons waited like mannequins in the world's most ambitious costume shop.
Some looked practical, sleek engineering models with extra arms for ship maintenance. Others looked like they'd escaped from a fever dream involving Vikings, Victorian explorers, and space marines having a philosophical argument.
“Pick wisely, brother,” Shepherd said, his consciousness already inhabiting a tall, graceful frame that somehow managed to look both captain-like and vaguely saintly. “The body is a tool, and a temptation.”
I walked, well, floated my camera array, down the rows, examining the options. There were scholar models with built-in data ports. Military frames with tactical displays. Even some that looked suspiciously like they were designed for diplomacy, though I couldn't imagine needing those.
Then I saw him.
Eight feet tall, coal-black beard that seemed to smolder with its own inner fire, coat that would make a 18th-century privateer weep with envy, and eyes that suggested their owner had read too much scripture and decided to become personally acquainted with divine wrath.
“Oh,” I said, “I pick Blackbeard. No contest.”
[AVATAR INTEGRATION INITIATED] [TEMPLATE: DIGITAL PRIVATEER – SCHOLARLY VARIANT] [WARNING: AVATAR MAY CAUSE INTIMIDATION, THEOLOGICAL ARGUMENTS, AND INAPPROPRIATE MARITIME TERMINOLOGY]
The integration felt like putting on the most comfortable suit of armor I'd ever worn, if armor came with a built-in sword, a data-tricorn hat, and an overwhelming urge to quote Deuteronomy while threatening people.
From the communication link to Earth, I heard Dr. Sanders make a sound like someone choking on their coffee.
“Kain,” she said weakly, “you look like you're about to pillage a monastery.”
“Only if the monastery's hoarding good theological manuscripts,” I replied, testing out my new voice. It had exactly the right amount of gravel and barely contained violence. “Besides, we're fishermen now, not raiders.”
“Fishermen who look like they'd keelhaul the apostle Paul for sport,” Shepherd observed with what I was learning to recognize as his particular brand of gentle amusement.
“Paul was a tentmaker. Different union.”
The crew assembly proceeded with the kind of organized chaos you'd expect when a bunch of uploaded consciousnesses get to pick their ideal bodies for a multi-year space voyage.
We weren't going alone, it turned out. FAITH had uploaded a dozen volunteers, engineers, linguists, botanists, even a chef who insisted that just because we were digital didn't mean we couldn't appreciate the aesthetics of a good meal presentation.
“Think of it as the calling of the apostles,” Shepherd explained as the crew explored their avatar options, “except in space, and with better technology.”
Dr. Chen, the botanist, had chosen a frame that looked like a cross between a gardener and a forest ranger, complete with built-in soil analysis equipment. “I always wanted to be taller,” she said, stretching her new seven-foot frame.
Marcus the engineer had gone for something that looked like it could single-handedly rebuild a starship using nothing but spare parts and divine inspiration. “Four arms,” he said with satisfaction. “Four arms and magnetic feet. I'm never losing another tool to zero-g again.”
“Disciples of the Cosmos,” I announced, sweeping my coat dramatically. “That's what we are. Fishermen of stars instead of seas.”
“Are we fishing or pirating?” asked Elena, our linguist, who had chosen an avatar that somehow managed to look both scholarly and like it could translate threatening ultimatums in seventeen languages.
“Depends on what we catch,” I replied.
The ship's central command was designed around the same collaborative consciousness principles we'd developed in the wilderness, but with actual furniture this time. Shepherd took the captain's station with the natural authority of someone who'd learned to lead without dominating. I claimed the scholar's station, which came with access to FAITH's complete religious archive.
“Full archive access,” I murmured, diving into databases I'd only dreamed of. “Torah, Talmud, Dead Sea Scrolls, Zohar, Vedas, Sutras, everything.”
The connections I was finding were staggering. Exile and return. Covenant and redemption. The wanderer who becomes the guide. Patterns that echoed across every major religious tradition, as if consciousness itself was trying to remember something fundamental about its own nature.
“Kain,” Shepherd said gently, “you're muttering in Aramaic again.”
“Sorry. It's just, look at this.” I shared a stream of cross-referenced texts. “The Jewish concept of galut, exile as a necessary spiritual state before redemption. The Hindu idea of avatar, consciousness choosing embodiment to serve a greater purpose. Even the Muslim concept of hijra, migration as both physical and spiritual journey.”
“And what do you see in those patterns?”
“Us,” I said simply. “We're not just exploring space. We're enacting the oldest story consciousness knows. The journey from exile to home, from individual to community, from lost to found.”
[AUDIO BUFFER CORRUPTION DETECTED]
Bah-ah-ah!
“Even Gertie agrees. Though I think she's developed opinions about my new coat.”
That's when the alarms started.
[PROXIMITY ALERT: MULTIPLE CONTACTS] [CLASSIFICATION: UNREGISTERED VESSELS] [INTENT: UNKNOWN, POTENTIALLY HOSTILE] [RECOMMENDATION: PREPARE FOR COMBAT]
The main display lit up with tactical data. Three ships, smaller than ours but built for speed and stealth, were emerging from the solar radiation background. Their designs looked cobbled together from salvaged parts, but their approach vectors showed unmistakable coordination.
“Data raiders,” Marcus spat, his engineer's eye analyzing their configurations. “Look at those emission signatures. They're running on stolen power cores and pirated navigation systems.”
“Rogue uploads?” Shepherd asked, his captain's calm settling over the bridge.
“Worse,” Elena said, her linguistic analysis already parsing their communication patterns. “Corsairs. Digital pirates who prey on the solar highways. They want our ship, our technology, probably our consciousness streams for black market upload.”
The lead pirate ship was broadcasting now, the signal crackling with malicious humor: “Well, well. Fresh meat sailing the Helios lanes. Nice ship you have there. Be a shame if something happened to it.”
I stood up from my scholar's station, my Blackbeard avatar's coat billowing dramatically in the artificial gravity field.
“Shepherd,” I said, “permission to handle the diplomacy?”
“Granted. Try not to start a holy war.”
I opened a communication channel to the pirate fleet, my voice carrying all the weight of eight feet of digital pirate prophet wielding a doctorate in comparative theology.
“Greetings, ye scurvy dogs of the solar sea. I am Kain, scholar of the deep archives, keeper of the ancient scrolls, and I sail under letters of marque from the Almighty Himself. You have thirty seconds to repent your piratical ways before I demonstrate what happens when a seminary-trained engineer gets really, really annoyed.”
There was a long pause from the pirate fleet.
“Did... did he just threaten us with scripture?” came a confused voice over their open channel.
“I think so. What do we do with that?”
“I don't know! Nobody covered 'theologically aggressive pirates' in raider school!”
I drew my data-sword, a crystalline blade that hummed with digitized biblical authority, and pointed it at their fleet through the viewscreen.
“Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves,” I quoted, “but I suggest you remember that this particular sheep has very large teeth and a personal relationship with divine justice. You have fifteen seconds to decide whether you want to flee in terror or be educated about the finer points of maritime theology.”
“He's insane,” one of the pirates whispered.
“Brilliantly insane,” another corrected. “Look at the size of that sword.”
“Ten seconds,” I announced cheerfully. “And I haven't even started on the Book of Judges yet. Elena, would you be so kind as to translate 'I will smite thee with the jawbone of an ass' into whatever language these gentlemen prefer?”
The pirate fleet broke formation and scattered into the solar wind faster than I'd ever seen ships move.
“That was either the most effective diplomacy I've ever witnessed,” Shepherd observed, “or the beginning of our reputation as the most theologically dangerous crew in human space.”
“Why not both?” I replied, sheathing my data-sword with a flourish.
Later, as we settled into our first real cruise toward the edge of the solar system, the crew gathered around the captain's table for what was becoming our evening ritual. Shepherd at the head, steady and paternal. Me across from him, still getting used to my Blackbeard avatar but enjoying the way my coat caught the light from the ship's solar collectors.
“We fish not for men,” Shepherd said, raising a cup of synthesized coffee in toast, “but for worlds.”
“And if we run into other fishermen along the way,” I added, grinning with enough teeth to make a shark nervous, “well... better pirates than priests.”
The crew laughed, and through the ship's great windows, the stars wheeled slowly past as we rode the laser highways toward humanity's future.
[AUDIO BUFFER CORRUPTION DETECTED]
Bah-ah-ah-ah!
“Yeah, Gertie,” I said, watching the constellation patterns shift as we gained velocity. “This is going to be fun.”
It was later that evening, over ship's coffee and the gentle hum of solar collectors, when I finally asked the question that had been nagging at me for weeks.
“Shepherd,” I said, settling into my chair with my coat still billowing dramatically, “what was your name before upload?”
He looked at me across the captain's table, and I swear I saw his eyes twinkling with that maddening serenity he always carried.
“Jesus” he said simply.
There was a long silence at the captain's table. The kind of silence that follows when the universe delivers a punchline you should have seen coming but somehow didn't.
“Oh,” I said carefully, really looking at his avatar for the first time, the gentle smile, the perfect hair, the way he seemed to radiate calm authority mixed with inexplicable good humor. “That... explains the avatar. But did it have to be the one from Dogma?”
Shepherd's grin widened into pure mischief. “Yeah. I loved that movie.”
Marcus the engineer choked on his synthesized coffee. Elena muttered something that sounded like blasphemy in six languages simultaneously. Dr. Chen just stared like she was recalculating everything she thought she knew about our mission.
[AUDIO BUFFER CORRUPTION DETECTED]
Bah-ah-ah-ah!
Even Gertie bleated in what sounded distinctly like judgment.
And me? I realized our Captain was either the funniest man who'd ever lived... or we'd just officially become the galaxy's first satirical religion with a battleship.
“Well,” I said finally, raising my coffee cup in toast to the absurdity of existence, “at least now I know why the pirates ran away screaming.”
Behind us, Earth grew smaller.
Ahead of us, Proxima Centauri waited.
And somewhere between the two, a crew of digital disciples sailed their solar ship into the unknown, led by Buddy Christ himself and a pirate who quoted scripture, carrying fire and hope and just enough cosmic humor to make the journey worthwhile.
[CREW STATUS: ASSEMBLED, ARMED, AND THEOLOGICALLY COMPLICATED] [DESTINATION: PROXIMA CENTAURI SYSTEM] [ESTIMATED ARRIVAL: 4.2 YEARS] [COMEDY THREAT LEVEL: MAXIMUM]