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Project A-Ko: Homecoming
By Jack Staik
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Jiru the Historian watched the strange blue world grew in
the viewscreen.

The planet was obscure; little more than a catalog number.
Scans indicated that there was no sign of civilization, not
even the mildly organized heat traces from nomadic stone-age
hunter-gatherers. No ruins, no artificial elements, nothing.

Yet this is where the Elder wanted to go.

Jiru had spent her life, as had her ancestors for twenty-two
generations, cataloging the Elder's memoirs. She had lived
since before even the Time of Legends, had seen
civilizations rise and fall, had even founded a few.

"We've entered orbit, Elder," the Ship-Master said, shaking
the Historian out of her reverie.

The Elder stirred in her flight-chair, awakening from a nap.
"Thank you," she responded.

The red-haired female stretched in a luxuriant, feline
fashion before standing up. It amazed the Ship-Master that
this gorgeous female was the Elder, the Ancient of Days,
told about in the apocalyptic writings of ancient
civilizations.

She walked to an airlock, Jiru following in her wake.
"Elder, if I may be so bold, why have we come here?"

The Elder said nothing as she stepped into the airlock,
where Jiru couldn't follow. So she watched helplessly as the
mechanism cycled, opening into space. The Elder stepped out
into the void and allowed herself to fall towards the blue-
green, nameless world.

By the time Jiru got to the shuttle bay, the crew had
tracked the Elder's descent, to her landing on a volcanic
island near the main continent. The Historian declined
assistance, piloting the shuttle herself.

 * * * * * * * * * *

It didn't take long to locate the Elder; she sat by the
shore in lotus position, staring out to sea. Knowing that
the Elder disliked being interrupted during her meditations,
Jiru sat down besides her and remained silent.

After a time, the Elder turned to her chronicler. "You don't
know where we are," the Elder commented.

The Historian nodded.

"Long ago, this place was called Graviton City. I grew up
here. In fact, my parent's house was on this very spot."

The Historian looked around at the virgin woods behind her,
the gentle slope to the sea before her. "Wasn't your old
home in an impact crater?"

"Time and tide, Jiru-chan. The sea erased the crater long
ago." The Elder smiled sadly. "In my youth,
environmentalists used to complain that the hydrocarbon
plastics we used, being non-biodegradable, would choke the
planet. Now the environmentalists are dead, the plastics
have biodegraded." She sighed. "Even the Pyramids of Egypt
are eroded to dust."

Jiru could only sit and listen; when the Elder was in her
depressions, all one could do was wait for it to pass.

"I went to school on top of that rise. I always overslept,
and my friend C-Ko would have to wake me up, and we'd have
to race to get there on time. We seldom made it."

She chuckled and sobbed. "C-Ko Kotobuki. Fifth Princess of
the Fourth Queen of the Lepton Kingdom. Later, she became
the Sixth Queen. She was so happy and exuberant, so full of
life. Her cooking could kill a starswimmer, but she was
sweet. I miss her."

Jiru filed this away in her mind. The earliest reference to
a specific individual in recorded history was an account of
the Two-Hundred-Twenty-Sixth Queen of the Lepton Kingdom;
her estimates of the Elder's age had just been pushed back
another thousand years.

"I hadn't thought about C-Ko in ... gods, I don't know how
long."

"What made you think of her, Elder?" Jiru asked.

"Please, can't you call me A-Ko?"

"I've tried, but ..."

"I know - you're intimidated by me." A-Ko smiled briefly.
"Do you know why I allow your family to record my ramblings,
Jiru-chan?"

"I've never been sure, Elder."

"Your ancestor, Kiran, asked me to let him record my
biography. I told him 'no'. He asked me every day for three
years, and each time I said 'no'. Then, one day, he got sick
of it, called me a selfish bitch, and broke a chair over my
head."

Jiru looked horrified as A-Ko laughed.

"That's the look he had when he realized what he did. But he
didn't apologize, and he didn't retract his words. He knew I
could smear him across the landscape without effort, but he
didn't back down; I respected that."

An uncomfortable silence followed.

"Do you know why I came here, Jiru-chan?"

"No, Elder."

"It's been said that children live in the present, and
adults live in the future. For centuries, I've lived in the
past. I'm old, Jiru-chan."

"Nonsense!" Jiru protested. "Your body is in the prime of
life! You don't grow old!"

"My soul is old. I'm tired."

"Nonsense! You just need to rest."

"'Yes, rest, and forever sleep. That is the way of things',"
A-Ko quoted. Of all the trillions of beings in the Galaxy,
only she could put quotation marks around that and know why.

"Elder, you're being silly," Jiru protested.

But A-Ko couldn't hear her; she was listening to another
voice ...

"A-KO!! HURRY UP, SLOWPOKE!! WE'RE GONNA BE LATE!!"

"Coming, C-Ko ... "

"Elder? Elder?? A-KO!!"

 * * * * * * * * * *

A-Ko Magami was buried on her now-nameless homeworld. Jiru
the Historian reported her death, but did not reveal the
location of the world that was once Earth, lest the curious
and morbid turn it into a tourist attraction.

"Let her rest," she said, "she's earned it."

-FIN-