Doom Overtakes 3 Very Different Planets, Earth Included, in This Eerie Sci-Fi Short Story

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Death Echoes Overlapping: A Poignant Sci-Fi Tale from Lightspeed Magazine

In the vast expanse of the Tau Andromeda planetary system, a necropolis space station stands as a silent sentinel, its halls echoing with the whispers of the dead. This is the setting for “Death Echoes Overlapping,” a haunting and thought-provoking science fiction story by Megan Chee, featured in the latest issue of Lightspeed Magazine.

The story begins with a vivid description of the necropolis station, where the keepers of the tomb attend to the dying and the dead with meticulous care. These keepers, tasked with the sacred duty of preparing bodies for the afterlife, harvest the “death echoes” of the departed in glowing thuribles. These echoes, a mysterious energy source, are channeled through a series of pipes to an immense vat at the center of the station, which then distributes the energy to the five planets of the Tau Andromeda system.

In this civilization, death is not seen as a tragedy but as a gift, a sacrifice that fuels the pleasures of life for the living. The people of Tau Andromeda live in peace and plenty, their society powered by the passing of those who came before. However, as the story unfolds, we learn that even the most golden of ages must eventually fade.

Aeons pass, and the once-thriving civilization of Tau Andromeda begins to crumble. Wars, disease, and the rise of new religions lead to the decline of the death echo harvests. Eventually, the population dwindles and dies out, leaving the necropolis station to hang silent and empty in the cold, dark expanse of space.

But the story doesn’t end there. Millions of years after the fall of Tau Andromeda, three planets in different galaxies are suddenly destroyed, their civilizations annihilated in an instant. A gamma-ray burst swallows one, a weapon of mass destruction obliterates another, and a swarm of matter-devouring nanobacteria consumes the third.

These three planets, separated by vast distances and unaware of each other’s existence, share a strange connection in their final moments. Their death echoes, that strange energy only truly understood by the keepers of the Tau Andromeda necropolis, ripple out across impossible distances, overlapping and reverberating through space and time.

The story then shifts to Earth in the year 2237, where Esther, a bored security officer, sits in a watchtower monitoring the Singapore Floating Archipelago for unauthorized foreign activity. As the rain cascades down in heavy sheets, Esther’s mind wanders, contemplating the futility of her job and the state of the world.

In this future Earth, wars rage across the globe, with superpowers tearing each other apart over the remaining habitable land. The once-thriving corner of Southeast Asia is slowly slipping away into the rising ocean, forgotten by the rest of the world.

Esther’s life is a monotonous slog, interspersed with brief moments of happiness and love. She recently ended her relationship with Wei Jie, unable to bear his obliviousness to the impending doom of humanity. Despite the clear signs that their world is coming to an end, Wei Jie clings to the hope of a future, planning for a life that will never come to pass.

As Esther gazes out at the raging, empty ocean, she feels a sense of self-satisfied certainty that she has nothing to complain about. Throughout history, billions of people have led short, brutal lives and died unpleasant deaths. At least she has lived for thirty-five years, experiencing moments of joy and love amidst the monotony.

The story then takes us to the planet Autura, where the Collective, a massive swarm of tiny insectoid creatures called Units, morphs into the Farmer. The Farmer, one of the Collective’s many Characters, leads a contented life, plowing the land, planting seeds, and harvesting the milky-white fruit that provides nutrition to the swarm.

Unlike other Characters, such as the Philosopher, the Leader, or the Teacher, the Farmer does not grapple with existential questions or worry about the future of the Collective. Their life is one of sunlight, warmth, and plenty, a simple existence that brings comfort and satisfaction.

Unit XJ7832, a single cell in the neural network of the Farmer’s brain, experiences this comfort and satisfaction too, in so far as an individual Unit can consciously experience anything. Born three revolutions ago in the rich bubbling swamp of the Mother’s Embrace, Unit XJ7832 emerged with millions of its siblings, instinct driving them to join the comfortably amorphous shape of the Mother, where they learn their places in each of the Collective’s Characters.

Surrounded by trillions of its siblings, all united in a single purpose, there is no need and no desire for individual thought. Unit XJ7832 plays its part, and together, the Collective moves forward.

The story then takes us to the gas giant planet of Lalesh, where the Wisps, ethereal creatures made of thin, weblike tissue, ride the supersonic winds in an eternal journey around the planet. These Wisps, though appearing to be mere fluttering slips dancing on the winds, are vibrantly alive, their minds teeming with philosophy, mathematics, and poetry.

Communicating via an intricate language of rippling movement, the Wisps form flocks, flying at the same speed in the same trajectory, sharing stories, singing symphonies, and marveling at the luminescence of each other’s minds.

However, one Wisp, the Lonely Wisp, does not fly with a flock. Their body, with an awkward shred down the middle, makes their flight path lurching and inconsistent. The Lonely Wisp passes through flocks on occasion but can never stay with the group, always lagging behind or hurtling helplessly ahead.

The Wisps are not meant to be alone; they are artists, poets, scientists, and scholars. The wonders of their minds are meant to be shared, admired, and exalted over. But the Lonely Wisp dances through the storms on a solitary path, creating beautiful things that no one else will ever see.

As the death echoes of the three planets ripple across vast distances from the point of destruction, the waves of energy meet mid-space and pass through each other with a discordant buzz. Energy sparks and jumps, stuttering through time.

In the final days of Earth, Autura, and Lalesh, their people become subliminally aware of something alien, something unfamiliar, pressing in at the periphery of their subconscious; experiences so wildly different from their understanding of existence that their waking minds cannot make sense of it.

When they sleep, they dream strange dreams.

Esther, buried alive in a sea of bugs, struggles to make sense of her nightmare. She is one of them, a small scuttling thing amid a massive throng of small scuttling things. Horror swells in her, but there is no release. She can’t make a sound, can’t move against the writhing mass of insects pressing against her. She is trapped.

With nowhere else to go, she retreats within herself, desperately trying to block out the nightmare unfolding around her. Gradually, she becomes aware of something else, something beyond the horrible scuttling movement, beyond the trillions of exoskeletal bodies and insectoid legs. She begins to feel a pattern to the movement. Unbelievably, there is a semblance of order here amid the chaos.

She gives in to it. What else can she do? She moves in the pattern that she is called to move in, lets it pull her along, and soon she realizes that her body knows what to do, even if her conscious mind does not. She swims along the flowing current of bugs, and although they move together, each one has its own distinct role to play.

As she moves through the tides of Units, her perspective begins to shift. There is a broadening, a zooming-out, like staring at an optical illusion and suddenly seeing the big picture.

And it dawns on her—she is just one cell among trillions in this massive organism. She is no better than any of the others. She is no smarter, no more jaded, no less ignorant. They are all the same, and individually they are insignificant, insentient. But together, they are a thinking thing, with a mind—a consciousness—a soul.

Esther jolts awake, gasping. Tears stream down her face. She rolls off her bunk bed and staggers to the small mirror hanging on the wall. Her reflection is almost unrecognizable; she shrinks back from her bloodshot eyes, her pale skin, her expression twisted in confusion and fear.

She can’t remember the last time she cried. For so long, everything has felt so muted, so meaningless; her emotions like a stagnant pool, stirred by neither joy nor despair. But now she remembers the terror of that writhing place, buried alive in the swarm of their bodies. And the wonder of it, the beauty of their synchronized movement, working together to form a seamless whole, a person.

Someone pounds loudly on the door. She staggers the few steps over to it, unlatches the lock with trembling fingers, and pulls it open. Standing there, one fist still raised to knock, is Wei Jie.

“What happened?” he demands. He lives in the room across the corridor. It was the compromise they landed on, back when he wanted them to move into married-couple housing but she was reluctant to give up her comfortable solo quarters. She beat astronomical odds to win the ballot for this room, while most of the other singles slept in double-decker beds down in the dormitories. “I heard you screaming all the way in my room. You okay?”

Esther runs a hand over her sweat-slick face. “Just a nightmare.”

Wei Jie looks skeptical. “Since when do you get nightmares?”

He used to describe his dreams to her when they met for breakfast. Esther actually quite enjoyed hearing about his dreams; they were weird and creepy, absurd and funny. She, on the other hand, never had anything interesting to report. “I dreamed I failed my exam,” or, “I dreamed my boss scolded me.”

For a moment, she thinks about their dull mornings together, reading news pamphlets over diluted cups of kopi brewed from reused grounds, and she feels a stab of something horribly like longing. She looks at Wei Jie and wonders—is she justified in her contempt? Does she have the right to judge him? Aren’t they all essentially the same small scurrying creatures, living their brief lives and following the roles set out for them?

She has not asked such questions of herself in a long time. It is uncomfortable.

“I had a weird dream too,” he adds. “But it was a nice one. I was flying. It was cold, but I didn’t feel cold. All around me was this superstrong wind. There were weird flapping animals in the wind with me. Somehow I could understand them. One of them told me this amazing story. Wish I could remember it. Ten times better than the old Chinese dramas they screen in the rec room.”

“That sounds nice,” Esther says, surprised to hear the unfamiliar note of wistfulness in her own voice. “I wish I dreamed that instead.”

“Maybe you will tomorrow night,” he replies. He smiles at her, a little nervously.

Esther can’t help it; she smiles back. Wei Jie looks startled, and then his smile broadens. They both stand there for a few awkward seconds, smiling foolishly, before she mumbles some excuse and ducks back into her room.

The story then returns to Unit XJ7832, which has no concept of itself as an individual. It does not think, or feel, or experience anything beyond the Collective.

But there was a brief time, early in its life, when it did think of itself as a discrete entity. It was right after it matured from larvae in the swamp of the Mother’s Embrace. After it crawled out of the clutch of slimy eggs where it had grown to adulthood, Unit XJ7832 stood on the muddy shores of the Embrace, and for a brief time it was simply itself. It gazed upon the amber sky and the glowing sun setting over the bubbling swampland. It saw the landscape of its homeworld through its own eyes, not the eyes of the Collective.

All around it, its siblings were taking flight. Unit XJ7832 recognized the call of its ancestors, the instinctive understanding passed down through generations. It parted its shell to reveal a pair of gossamer wings and buzzed into the air, joining the thick swarm of Units.

Hovering in the air was the massive amorphous form of the Mother, waiting for them, exuding gentle benevolence. The newborn Units flew into the Mother and became the Mother themselves.

Unit XJ7832 reached the Mother and was absorbed into them. As the mass of Units closed in around it, that warm sensation of comfort and belonging was the last thing that Unit XJ7832 experienced as itself. After that, there has only been the Collective.

Until now.

Now, Unit XJ7832 is not with the Collective. It is somewhere else. And it is alone.

Unit XJ7832 shivers on the bed, pulling the thin blanket around itself. Where are its siblings? It longs for the Collective. It looks down at itself, horrified and entranced by its strange, long, pale, soft body. It stands up and looks down at its hands. Strange hands, weak and inefficient, unlike the powerful appendages of the Warrior or the agile many-jointed fingers of the Craftsman.

These thoughts… These feelings… They are not coming from the Collective. They do not originate from neurological pathways made from trillions of Units. They originate from…

From itself.

Unit XJ7832 does not allow itself to dwell on this vast impossibility, this warped new reality. Instead, it flexes its hands, focusing on that instead. The appendages are so solid. The skin is smooth. It is one thing, not an amalgamation of trillions. How alien.

Instinct propels Unit XJ7832 towards the door of the small room. It opens it and steps into the corridor outside. There are neither doors nor rooms on Autura, but somehow it understands these foreign things intuitively.

Unit XJ7832 walks along the corridor, glancing up at the flickering fluorescent lights. Other Characters walk past it, sometimes muttering a quick greeting.

This is a startling sight. Unit XJ7832 has never witnessed a Character from the outside. The Collective is only large and complex enough to form one Character at a time. The Collective is a massive, interconnected family, but every Character is completely alone.

It must be a lonely existence.

Unit XJ7832 barely understands the thought that flits across its fledgling consciousness. These are strange, unfamiliar, alien concepts. It is half itself, half something else.

It walks down the corridor, pushes open a door, and steps out into the balmy night air. The residential quarters are on a floating metal platform in the middle of the ocean. Unit XJ7832 gazes around at the vast expanse of dark, rippling water. The night sky above is dusted with constellations of stars.

It crouches down beneath the railing that separates the edge of the platform from the sea, and realizes that it wants. It wants to jump into the ocean. It wants to feel the cool water against its skin. It wants to taste the salt.

It reaches down, fingers brushing the rippling surface of the water—

—Unit XJ7832 awakens in the Collective. Its allocated hours of rest and replenishment are over. It is time to return to its tasks. Other Units will move into the replenishment area for their turn to rest, and Unit XJ7832 must take their place.

Is being part of the Collective a kind of death?

That sudden, inexplicable question hovers just beyond Unit XJ7832’s capacity for understanding. For a moment it almost thinks, almost feels. Then it rejoins the seamless flow of Units, falling back into its proper place, and forgets itself amid the warm embrace of the Collective.

The story then returns to the Lonely Wisp, who is composing a new poem as they soar on the wind. Lost in the ecstasy of creation, it almost doesn’t matter that it will never have an audience. Beauty for beauty’s own sake is the highest form of art.

They have no idea the gamma-ray burst is coming until it hits.

Esther jolts awake to the discordant blaring of an alarm.

She stumbles towards the door and pushes it open, not caring that she is dressed only in a long t-shirt. The corridor outside is packed with people, pushing and chattering in panic.

Through the crowd, a hand reaches out and grabs hers.

“Wei Jie,” she gasps. “What’s happening?”

“It’s the end,” he says, and she is struck by how perfectly calm he looks, how serene. “Some country has set off a doomsday weapon.”

She gapes. She has heard the rumors, of course, that each of the global superpowers are developing weapons of such massive destructive potential that a single blast can destroy what’s left of human civilization. Deep down, she has never believed it. It is too absurd to pour resources and energy into developing a doomsday weapon when humanity is already shambling towards the quiet whisper of an ending. Let it end, she thinks despairingly, let the candle flicker and die. Give us that, at least.

But they don’t even get the luxury of a quiet death. Instead, they will meet their end in fire and pain—all of humanity, united at last.

A monotonous voice announces over the intercom system, “Report in a calm and orderly manner to your assigned bomb shelters. Do not stop to assist others.”

Wei Jie’s hand tightens around hers as he pulls her into a corner. “I don’t want to go with them,” he says. “Will you come with me?”

“What? But the bomb—”

“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “You know that. The bomb shelters won’t keep anyone safe. I don’t want to die down there in the dark, packed like sardines. Let’s go outside.”

She gazes at him wonderingly. Where is his timidity, his placid adherence to the rules, his dedication to the status quo? Skinny and bespectacled, he looks just the same as he has for the last ten years, but she has the odd feeling that she is seeing someone entirely new.

“Okay,” she says.

They follow the jostling crowd, but as the others surge towards the staircases that will bring them to the undersea levels, Esther and Wei Jie slip away through an open door. They step out onto the gently bobbing platform, breathing in the briny scent of the ocean.

The sky is red. The horizon is aglow.

Esther lets out a sob, which climbs into a wail. She doesn’t want to die. The realization horrifies her. She thought she was ready; she was so sure she was ready. But her stoicism has failed her in the moment she needs it most. She howls with wild abandon and animalistic fury. There is a strange joy in it too, a release. Recognition, at last, that her death is something to grieve. It matters, doesn’t it? Her life. Her experiences. Her thoughts. Why has she never realized before, how much they all matter?

Wei Jie holds her tight as she screams and rages. His thin, wiry arms wind around her as she thrashes. “It’s okay,” he says. “It’s okay. It won’t hurt. It’ll be over so fast. We won’t feel a thing.”

“I was flying,” she says, muffled against his chest. “In my dream, just like the one you had. I was dancing in the cold wind.”

“I don’t think it was a normal dream,” Wei Jie says. “It was something else.”

“Yes. I know.”

“Maybe we’ll end up there, after this,” he says, ever optimistic. “Let’s meet again in the windy place. I’ll look for you there.”

Everything lights up in scarlet.

The story then returns to Autura, where a swarm of unknown nanobacteria is eating through the planet. Plants shrivel into dead crisps. The lakes dry up. Animals are decimated into shards of bone.

They have fought disease before, but this is something new. The Collective transforms into the Physician, but there is no time to investigate the cause or concoct a cure. The bacteria surge into the Collective. The Units die in the millions, tiny bodies falling to the ground.

The Physician staggers. They lift their hand, watching in horror as pieces of themself dissolve.

Unit XJ7832, part of the Physician’s eye, watches as everything falls apart. The Physician’s fear and loneliness ripples across the surviving Units. For a moment Unit XJ7832 feels afraid, not just as the Physician, but as itself. And then it feels nothing at all.

The story then returns to the Lonely Wisp, who is composing a new poem as they soar on the wind. Lost in the ecstasy of creation, it almost doesn’t matter that it will never have an audience. Beauty for beauty’s own sake is the highest form of art.

They have no idea the gamma-ray burst is coming until it hits.

The death echoes of the three planets crest out through space like a great shockwave, breaking over planets and stars and nebulae.

The waves of energy pass through the Tau Andromeda system, sweeping unnoticed over the five dead planets. But when it passes over the necropolis station, for a moment every empty thurible glows with energy. Firelight flickers in lamps on the necropolis walls. The gears of great clockwork machines groan into stiff movement. Stagnant fountains trickle and begin to flow.

For a moment, the necropolis space station lives.

Then, with a sigh, the death echoes fade. The once-great necropolis space station lies still and silent once again.

This poignant and thought-provoking story by Megan Chee explores themes of life, death, and the interconnectedness of all things. Through the experiences of Esther, Unit XJ7832, and the Lonely Wisp, Chee invites readers to contemplate the nature of existence and the meaning of life in the face of inevitable death.

The story’s vivid imagery and emotional depth make it a standout piece in the latest issue of Lightspeed Magazine, showcasing the magazine’s commitment to publishing innovative and thought-provoking science fiction and fantasy.

Tags: death echoes, necropolis, Tau Andromeda, Earth 2237, Singapore Floating Archipelago, Wei Jie, Esther, Autura, Collective, Units, Farmer, Lalesh, Wisps, gamma-ray burst, nanobacteria, doomsday weapon, Megan Chee, Lightspeed Magazine, science fiction, fantasy, poignant, thought-provoking, interconnectedness, existence, meaning of life.

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