Djaer wasn’t sure if they were snowflakes or characters in a foreign script — certainly no two symbols on the readout were the same. There was no use trying to interpret the timer. He knew enough about cryo-engineering and human biology to estimate that the humans would wake sometime in the next 50 intervals.

Djaer was sleepy. Very sleepy. His body was not designed to stay awake for this long. Genetically optimised for extreme long life, Djaer’s metabolism was among the slowest in the galaxy. He felt his eyelids droop, felt the aching in his limbs that told him he needed to sleep for a few hundred years. He could sleep for millennia if he needed to. It was a completely natural adaptation for a species that controlled the entire galaxy: send a message through the Network to the nearest habitable planet and you might have to wait a thousand years for the reply. So take a nap, a dreamless sleep, and wake up to the reply as if no time had passed at all.

Djaer tried not to think about his bed.

He couldn’t rest now. Even the shortest of power naps would last for several decades, and that would give the humans plenty of time to kill him and take control of the ship. Well, not really. Djaer was optimised not just for longevity; he was also extremely difficult to kill. But the ship and its cargo…? The humans could not be allowed to interfere.

He trudged along the walkway between the bridge and the first of the holds.

Wormly: Where do you think he’s going?

Wormdu: I hope he’s not coming to see us again. I don’t feel like making conversation.

Wormly: I think he’s just going to stare at the cargo again.

Wormdu: Ah yes, the “cargo”.

Wormly: I think he’s losing it, I really do.

Wormdu: Well, what did you expect?

Djaer reached the observation platform. He put one of his hands against the glass, gazing down at the cargo hold. There were more than a hundred of them on this ship, each with a capacity of a trillion cubics. Each the width and breadth of a small city (to say nothing of height), built to house the waste products of an entire planet. Except they were all almost entirely empty.

He didn’t know why the sight of it bothered him so much. After all, outside the hull of his ship was a great deal of empty space indeed. Djaer was no stranger to the void. Perhaps it was the fact that this particular void had walls around it. A perfect cube of nothingness, ten thousand lengths a side. Empty. It should have been filled with junk. That would have been significantly easier on the eye.

Wormdu: It must be lonely.

Wormly: I can’t even imagine. No one’s ever left the Network before.

Wormdu: The silence. The endless silence.

Wormly: Just think, having a whole brain to yourself? No voices, no announcements, no broadcast entertainment. Just silence all the way to the next galaxy.

Wormdu: Who wouldn’t go crazy?

Wormly: I wouldn’t be surprised if he started hearing things, you know? Anything to fill the silence.

Wormdu: Ooh, don’t, that’s a horrid thought.

“Not long now.”

Djaer grunted in irritation. He turned around and glared at the young woman.

“Are you following me?”

“Not at all.”

“It’s a big ship. Go and find a bulkhead to annoy.”

“Yes, yes, it’s a very big and very boring ship. Have you decided what you’re going to do with your humans yet?”

“I’ve had some ideas,” Djaer growled.

“I know you lot tend to be quite bloodthirsty. Maybe don’t kill all of them at once?”

“What’s it to you anyway? Friends of yours?”

She laughed. “No no, I don’t have any friends. Not anymore.”

Djaer grunted again, and continued to trudge along the walkway. A warm, metallic breeze blew into their faces.

“I’ve, er, noticed that a lot of the holds appear to be empty,” the woman said, catching up with him.

“What about it?”

“Is that normal?”

“This is not a normal expedition,” Djaer said.

“No indeed,” the woman mused. “But it does make one wonder, doesn’t it? What could be so very important to dispose of, that an entire galaxy class W.A.S.T.E. disposal vessel would be commandeered to transport it outside of the galaxy itself? I mean, most waste is just chucked into black holes these days, isn’t it?”

“Mm hmm.”

“So that makes me think, whatever it is, they don’t want it destroyed. Just kept out of the way. Like, really out of the way.”

Djaer deliberately stomped his feet as he walked. The sides of the walkway clanged and shuddered.

“You don’t know, do you?” the woman gasped. “Hahaa, oh this is hilarious. You don’t even fucking know what you’re transporting?”

Djaer groaned in frustration. At this point in a conversation he would usually tear a lesser being’s head off, or at the very least a limb or two. Screaming would be preferable to this.

The woman was still laughing.

“Oh, dear. You’re probably thinking about killing me again. You are, aren’t you? Wow. What a dick.” Djaer pretended not to hear her.

“Well, soon you’ll have your toys to play with. Hopefully they’ll keep you busy for a few years.”

“So that’s what you brought the humans on board for? To distract me?”

“You come from a long line of conquerors and tyrants, Djaer. It just wouldn’t be right for you to be out here alone without a species to subjugate.”

“How very thoughtful of you.”

“That’s what second-in-commands are for.” Another warm, bitter smile. “Just let me know if you’re going to make a mess, I really can’t stand the sight of blood.”

“Anything to get you to bugger off,” Djaer muttered.

Is that you?

Ma?

Oh, my boy, what are you doing? Where are you going?

Ma…

Come home, my boy. You don’t have to prove anything to anyone. Come home.

You’re dead, Ma. You’re gone.

No one’s ever really gone, son.

I buried you.

I’m still here. My thoughts are still in the Network.

I had to get away, Ma.

You left me behind.

I left everyone behind...

……..lonely business sometimes……

Djaer gazed at the humans in their cryo-pods. Sixty-seven of them. Just enough genetic diversity to foster a new population. Djaer smiled: he had decided what to do with them.

It made perfect sense really. Depending on the precise amount of intergalactic drag, it could take anything from two thousand to ten thousand years to reach their destination. Sure, he could sleep through the whole trip, he wouldn’t even need to resort to cryo-suspension. But where would be the fun in that?

He licked his lips, feeling something he hadn’t felt in a very long time. A thirst, not for power, but simply to dominate, to subjugate, to determine the fate of an entire race of lesser beings. It had been an adaptation, originally; it was what had allowed Djaer’s race to survive as long as they had. But since they had wrested control of the entire galaxy, what had once been a primal instinct became more of a hobby, a pleasurable activity that was considered normal and healthy to engage in every once in a while.

He’d known it as soon as he’d seen the cryo-pods, he’d known deep down what to do with them. He knew that he shouldn’t. He knew it was risky. Rearing an entire population of humans on board a galaxy class W.A.S.T.E. disposal vessel broke every rule in the book. But to hell with the book. Djaer didn’t play by those rules anymore. Beyond the outer reaches of the galaxy, outside the Network, there would be no one listening in, no one watching, no one to stop him.

“Um, what are you doing with those cryo-pods?”

“They’re going in the hold.”

“So you like your humans free range! Very commendable.”

“Why settle for sixty-seven humans when I can breed a whole civilisation?”

“Why indeed?”

The Mark 6000 Turbo Trash Chute™ slithered its way towards the array of pods, sniffed at them, then opened its enormous robotic jaws. Djaer made a point of looking at each of the faces just before they disappeared into the gullet of the Trash Chute, to be deposited far below, safe on the ground of Cargo Hold 1. Djaer’s flock, the children of the void. Oh, this would be so much fun.

He wondered how long he should nap for. Two hundred years? A thousand? He gazed through the glass at the humans’ new home. He’d get the matter replicators to manufacture a few supplies, some minerals, a reliable food supply. It would be such a shame if they managed to go extinct before he woke up. He locked the doors, drew up some maps of allowed and disallowed regions. It might take them a few decades to migrate to the lower decks. Maybe he’d install some surprises along the way.

“You’re a sick, sick bastard Djaer,” the young woman said. She spat on the ground by his feet. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to play with your food?”

Wormly: I never play with my food.

Wormdu: No, you just live in it.

Wormly: Nothing wrong with that.

Wormdu: Some might call it… disrespectful.

Djaer scowled at her. He double checked that Hold 78 was well and truly off limits. Not that it made a difference — even he didn’t have clearance. He sighed heavily.

“I will go to sleep soon,” he said. “Please don’t wake me unless there’s at least an amber alert.”

“You didn’t leave them any uranium did you? Wouldn’t want them waging nuclear war before we reach our destination.”

“I’m not stupid.”

The Turbo Trash Chute, having finished its meal, belched and slithered back into the nearest transduct.

Back on the bridge, Djaer gazed at the viewscreen. Their destination, the Cloud, sat squarely in the centre of the screen. The galaxy’s largest satellite. Far, far, far away. Around it, nothing. No stars. Just void. Behind them, everything and everyone that Djaer had ever known. He didn’t look back.

“Just one question,” he said, turning to the young woman. She smiled a smile that was both innocent and menacing.

Djaer looked her up and down.

“Who the hell are you?”