A Martin Chalfont Short Story – Number 029
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Room with a View – But now she was Lilavati, a prisoner, frozen in time, held captive by a strange and inexplicable force.
Lilavati’s memory was filled with fractured, fading images of her life before the room. She remembered the cold steel of her crewmates' ship, the hum of its engines as they drifted through endless space, and the quiet camaraderie of her crew. Sixty years ago, she had been Lilavati, an explorer, a researcher, part human, part machine, driven by curiosity and the desire to understand the universe. But now she was Lilavati, a prisoner, frozen in time, held captive by a strange and inexplicable force.
The mission that had led her here was supposed to be routine. They were a small crew of five, assigned to survey an ancient, abandoned planet that had once been home to an advanced civilisation. As their ship descended through the atmosphere, they’d gazed in awe at the planet's derelict cities—great metallic towers, crystalline domes, and sprawling causeways that arced toward the distant mountains and rolled out into the horizon like veins. What had once been a great civilisation was now a silent graveyard, dust settling over remnants of a people who had long since vanished.
The crew had set up their base on the outskirts of one of these cities, a place that had once bustled with life and now lay under a dense silence. Their initial surveys showed no signs of immediate danger, but the planet had felt strange, as though something were alive within its empty spaces. There was a sense of abandonment, but also of something unfinished, as if the planet had been paused in the middle of its own story.
On the second day of their exploration, Lilavati had come upon a room high up in one of the abandoned towers. It was large and empty, save for a single wide window that looked out over an expanse of water. The sea stretched far beyond what the eye could see, its waves crashing gently against the shore, reflecting hues of green and gold under a pale sky.
“A room with a view,” she had mused to her crewmates over the radio. Her voice, though digital, had carried a trace of her own wonder.
Lilavati had stepped to the window’s edge, marvelling at the sight. The city’s metallic towers gleamed faintly under the thin sunlight, their reflections rippling across the water. The room was perfectly still, like an untouched memory, and she found herself drawn to the ledge, her fingers tracing its cool surface. She had sat down, captivated by the eerie beauty of it all, her mind reaching out, wondering what had come before.
But just as her gaze settled on the horizon, a sudden wave of sensation swept over her body. She tried to move but found herself entirely immobilised, as if her joints had fused in place. Her vision began to blur at the edges, her sensors flooded by an unfamiliar energy, and a numbness crept through her systems. Panic flickered in her circuitry, but she was unable to so much as lift a finger.
“Lilavati, are you alright?” Her crewmates’ voices had crackled in her comms, growing more frantic as they repeated her name, but all she could do was tell them the single truth she knew.
“I’m…paralysed,” she managed to broadcast back, her voice distorted by the strange, pulsating energy filling the room.
Her crewmates tried everything to reach her, but an invisible barrier kept them out. They’d brought tools, advanced technology, even tried to blast their way through, but whatever held Lilavati was too powerful, defying all of their attempts. Days turned to weeks as they tried to break the hold the room had on her, but with supplies dwindling and their ship in need of fuel, they were forced to make an impossible decision. One by one, her crewmates bid her farewell, their voices heavy with sorrow and defeat. Lilavati watched them leave, trapped by the force that held her, helpless as she watched them disappear into the sky in their ship.
And then she was alone.
For sixty years, she remained in that room, gazing out over the sea. She couldn’t move, couldn’t feel, yet her consciousness persisted, her sensors detecting the subtle shift of light and shadow, the endless ebb and flow of the waves below. Her human memories had begun to blur, yet she felt them as a shadow of her former self, the spark that kept her mind alive as her body lay dormant.
As time passed, she noticed a presence, an eerie sensation that kept her company, as faint as a whisper. It began as a murmur, like echoes reverberating through the room, soft as the sigh of the wind. At first, she dismissed it as a fault in her sensory systems, a glitch from the years of immobility. But as the murmurs grew louder, she realised they were not random, nor were they from within her. They were voices, faint and distant, as though rising from the depths of the sea or whispering through the stones of the ruined city.
The voices spoke in a language she could not understand, but their tone was unmistakably mournful, a lament that seemed to pulse with the rhythm of the waves. She began to piece together fragments of meaning, abstract impressions that drifted into her consciousness. They spoke of loss, of despair, of a world that had once thrived and had now fallen silent. It was as though the souls of the planet itself were reaching out to her, desperate to be heard.
Lilavati became attuned to these voices, allowing them to fill the silence of her imprisonment. She felt a kinship with the lost souls, sharing in their grief and isolation. In her mind, she began to weave their words into stories, imagining what their lives might have been like. She saw visions of a people who had built great cities, who had loved and fought and dreamed, only to be swept away by forces beyond their control. She felt their loneliness, their longing to be remembered.
One day, as the voices murmured their stories to her, Lilavati felt something stir within her. A warmth spread through her body, subtle at first but growing stronger, like a faint pulse of energy that she hadn’t felt in decades. Her sensors registered a flicker, a faint hum as though her systems were waking up from a long sleep. She couldn’t move, but she felt a shift, a change in the atmosphere of the room.
The voices grew louder, more distinct, their whispers turning into a chant that resonated through her core. She didn’t understand their words, but the intent was clear—a call, an invitation. The room seemed to tremble as the force holding her began to shift, loosening its grip. She felt herself drawn into the rhythm of the chant, her mind slipping into a trance-like state, merging with the strange energy that surrounded her.
In that moment, she was no longer Lilavati the cyborg, the abandoned explorer. She was something else, a part of the room, a part of the planet itself. The boundaries between her and the voices dissolved, and she felt herself merging with the countless souls that had lingered here, waiting for someone to hear their story. She became a vessel for their memories, their dreams, their regrets. She saw visions of the planet’s past, glimpses of its people, their rise and fall, their hopes and fears.
As the visions subsided, she felt the force holding her finally release its grip. Her body remained motionless, but her mind was free, drifting beyond the confines of the room, carried by the voices of the dead. She felt herself drawn out over the sea, her consciousness expanding, reaching out across the waters that had once separated her from freedom.
And then, in a final surge of energy, Lilavati felt herself let go, her mind dissolving into the vastness, becoming one with the ancient planet that had held her captive for so long. She was no longer a prisoner, no longer alone. She was a part of the cosmos, her essence woven into the fabric of the world, a silent witness to the endless passage of time.
Back on the ship that had long since become a relic, a faint signal pulsed in the darkness of deep space. It was a single transmission, a message sent from an ancient, forgotten planet.
“I am here,” it said, a voice carried on the waves of eternity. “I am here, and I remember.”